Galaxy Cluster blows minds, bends light.

[mrk]

Wowza.

Just a thought: as well as the light travelling back to our little telescopes it has also been going the other way (each and every)..so, where does that light end up if those objects were formed at the BEGINNING OF TIME?!

Our cosmic other halves will know that!

 

[Shikkaka]

How do they actually calculate that "800 trillion" figure??

They don't. They simple have a big red button they hit which creates a random trillion figure for the wow factor.

 

[Beasty]

Woah!

 

[gord]

Potato/Potato etc.

I eagerly await your 800 trillion potatoes thread!

 

[bledd]

Speaking of the south pole, I've had my name printed on it

 

[mrk]

I eagerly await your 800 trillion potatoes thread!

Do you have a problem with the figure?

If you really want finer details then the astrophysics journal abstract says this, whatever it means ¬_¬

We report the spectroscopic confirmation of SPT-CL J0546-5345 at langzrang = 1.067. To date this is the most distant cluster to be spectroscopically confirmed from the 2008 South Pole Telescope (SPT) catalog, and indeed the first z>1 cluster discovered by the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect (SZE). We identify 21 secure spectroscopic members within 0.9 Mpc of the SPT cluster position, 18 of which are quiescent, early-type galaxies. From these quiescent galaxies we obtain a velocity dispersion of 1179+232 –167 km s–1, ranking SPT-CL J0546-5345 as the most dynamically massive cluster yet discovered at z>1. Assuming that SPT-CL J0546-5345 is virialized, this implies a dynamical mass of M 200 = 1.0+0.6 –0.4 × 1015 M sun, in agreement with the X-ray and SZE mass measurements. Combining masses from several independent measures leads to a best-estimate mass of M 200 = (7.95 ± 0.92) × 1014 M sun. The spectroscopic confirmation of SPT-CL J0546-5345, discovered in the wide-angle, mass-selected SPT cluster survey, marks the onset of the high-redshift SZE-selected galaxy cluster era.

 

[cm1179]

makes me want to get out there and see it!

 

[Vita]

It looks so beautiful. I wish for once, they'd turn all the lights off in the world, so everyone could see the milky way, well some of it at least.

 

[Morba]

makes me want to get out there and see it!

Same, was talking to my wife and boy about space and the moon and stars last night. Wife was shocked when I said 'If i earn enough I would quickly be on a trip into space on that Virgin thing'

 

[shifty_uk]

No chocolate? Oh wait, that's Cadbury...

 

[khrall]

Would that be Daisy A and Daisy B or can you distinguish them because of their luminosity?

By their size, one of them is a white dwarf, the other is a supergiant.

 

[ntg]

A Sun is a Star though!

Also, info on how no: stars is calculated: http://www.universetoday.com/24328/how-many-stars/

That explains jack-all about counting stars!!!

How did they calculate the number of stars in any galaxy to begin with, and how did they calculate the number of galaxies as well? Sounds very arbitrary to me.

I'd say those stars are not 800 trillion but 750 trillion. See my point?

 

[mrk]

Yes that's right, it's not a set figure, it's an estimate, it's the only reasonable way to calculate the number given the size of the galaxy being observed and other galaxies that have previously been analysed.

A better link: http://www.helium.com/items/590695-determining-the-number-of-stars-in-the-sky



They don't just wake up one day after a night's stargazing and pick up the phone "Sheldon, I got it! There are 800 trillion stars! Print it!"

There was another thread on something similar a while back and it was shown that physicists/astronomers/scientists send their initial data to partners around the world to give the results a 2nd opinion before anything is publicised, i.e. This wouldn't have made the journal if it wasn't a sound confirmation within the Astronomy community, like all things in the Scientific world.

 

[bloodiedathame]

Wowza.

Just a thought: as well as the light travelling back to our little telescopes it has also been going the other way (each and every)..so, where does that light end up if those objects were formed at the BEGINNING OF TIME?!

From my understanding: Some photons from the big bang (theory) are presumably still in existence, but spread out across the entire universe, so detecting them would be unlikely as most will have perished. Photons get absorbed when they hit something.

Someone on here probably knows far more about this than me, and I hope they correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[dave1983]

Whooa 8trillion Stars, anyone seen the andromeda galaxy with there own eyes, M31 - Messier 31

it can be seen in the winter months, it looks like a faint smudge, when you look through a telescope your looking at the core .

 

[xBLiNG]

Was expecting chocolate

 

[gillywibble]

Awesome.

 

[Makunouchi]

Fixed again, "a sun" would imply multiple suns.

My cat is called daisy.. but I don't go round calling all cats daisies!

I thought our star was technically named Sol?

 

[footman]

It looks so beautiful. I wish for once, they'd turn all the lights off in the world, so everyone could see the milky way, well some of it at least.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18195092

 

[Pixel]

I thought our star was technically named Sol?

I think Sol is the Latin name, everyone calls it "The Sun" though, so that's what we use. Sol will probably be used when we're finally exploring space, and it's what we'll tell aliens our star is called when they ask.

I hope we have another name for The Milky Way, because it sounds really gay.