Closer look at a Galaxy, Nebula, and Planet

Observatory / Course Archives / ASTR 110 Fall 2019 / DeGroat

M83 Galaxy

The M83 Galaxy, also known as the Thousand-Ruby Galaxy or the Southern Pinwheel, is located 15 million light years away. It was discovered in 1752. In 2015, it was released from NASA that is 12 million years away, and lies within the constellation of Hydra. It is a Barred Spiral Galaxy. Its composition is made up of many leftover neutron stars and black holes when looking with an X-ray wavelength. There are both blue and reddish hints when looking at a picture of this spiral galaxy. This signifies that there is a population of all types of stars, but mostly young. It has very distinct spiral arms shown in photos of it. It has many discovered supernovae, and was recently passed up for the most discovered supernovae. It has both young and old stellar populations located inside.

This galaxy is very similar to the Milky Way, but it is 2.5 times smaller. But, it has a double nucleus and “double circumnuclear starburst ring”. There are many star clusters located within this galaxy, and its possible another smaller galaxy merged with it a long time ago. There is more star formation occuring in this galaxy than in the Milky way as far as we know.

Rosette Nebula

The Rosette Nebula, a place of star formation, is located around 5,000 light years away from our earth. It is located in the constellation Monoceros, also known as the Unicorn. There are also many young stars located in the center of the nebula. The nebula itself is an emission spectrum. This means it's a hot, diffuse gas, and is going from a high state of energy to a lower state of energy. It is emitting energy. The Rosette Nebula appears to glow when looked at with an Ultraviolet lense. Stellar winds are said to clear out the center of the nebula, which is also protected by gas. The gas in and around this nebula is upwards to 6 million kelvins in temperature and there is quite a bit of X-Ray radiation emitted from these stars. It is around 4,000 light years across in width. There have been about 160 young stars discovered in this nebula.

There is an open cluster located within this nebula named NGC 2244. The guess for the age of this open cluster is close to 500,000 years old. This cluster was formed because of the dust and gases from the Rosette Nebula.

It's a very massive nebula - one of the more massive emission nebulae found. It is 10,000 Solar masses.

Saturn

Saturn is the 6th star from the Sun in our solar system. To give context, our Earth is the 3rd star away from the Sun. It lies beyond the frost line, and is therefore cooler than our earth and made up more of gases such as Hydrogen and Helium. Saturn is located 900 million miles from the Sun. It is much larger than the earth, and also has the most distinguishable rings of the gas giants. Saturn's days are much shorter, only being 10.7 hours, while Saturn's years are equivalent to 29 Earth years.

It is also the 2nd largest planet in mass in our solar system. It rotates very quickly, orbiting in less time than the earth. Because of this, Saturn is flat at its poles. Saturn is not very dense, as it could float in an ocean of its size. There are many different types of rings, some being brighter than others. The rings are most likely made up of water, or cold ice/snowballs. The exact composition of the rings is not for certain, though. Saturn's composition is, basically, a cloud made of both dust and gas.

Saturn currently is the planet with the most moons, just recently surpassing Jupiter with 82 moons. It has seven rings in total that you can see through a telescope. Another fun fact is that Saturn experiences seasons like our earth as its orbital inclination is very similar. There is no visible hard surface because it is mostly made up of gases.