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If you're looking for hidden treasures, the dusty disk of our Milky Way galaxy might not be the first place you'd look. But that's exactly where the European Southern Observatory found almost a hundred glittering prizes.
These 30 pictures show just a portion of the treasure trove: 96 open star clusters hiding in the galaxy's dusty core. These stars can't be seen in the visible-light spectrum because they're shrouded within clouds of dust, but the ESO's VISTA infrared survey telescope is able to see through the dust. And that's not all: Sophisticated software was able to remove the glare of foreground stars, allowing the dimmer clusters to stand out.
Why go to all that trouble? Well, astronomers surmise that the majority of stars that are at least 50 percent bigger than our own sun are formed within these types of open clusters, and yet not that many of them have been seen — primarily due to all that pesky dust. Getting a better read on the distribution and composition of open clusters will provide new pieces to the puzzle of our galaxy's formation.
"We found that most of the clusters are very small and only have about 10 to 20 stars. Compared to typical open clusters, these are very faint and compact objects — the dust in front of these clusters makes them appear 10,000 to 100 million times fainter in visible light. It’s no wonder they were hidden," Radostin Kurtev, a member of the team making the observations, said in today's image advisory from the ESO.
The team's findings are to be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. But these discoveries may well be merely a first taste of the treasure. "We’ve just started to use more sophisticated automatic software to search for less concentrated and older clusters," said Jura Borissova, the lead author of the study. "I am confident that many more are coming soon."
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This mosaic should be made into a poster and screensaver!! It is absolutely beautiful!!
@serob, you will find wallpaper and poster sized images of these clusters at:
http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1128a/
Anyone of those images in the mosaic above could the system that has another Earth like planet.
The scale of our insignificance is magnificent.
Yes, and the scale of Just The Facts' arrogant ignorance is 10 fold....
10??? is that linear or on a log scale?
...the scale of our significance is rather magnificent compared to an elementary particle.
sophisticated software? wouldn't salsa j do that?...I guess not in an automated fashion without a few scripts....they are all in the southern sky?....nice pics...I really wanted to click on each one for a zoomin look but I dare say with 96 of em and more to come no doubt, I'll eventually get the tiffs....thanks alan.....this column is almost sure to be good news and worth the time to gander at, I have all thought that more advanced cultures would be further into our core, like in these OSCs....now if we can just spot the hidden dysonsphere...
Simply beautiful! I wonder how many of those stars are actually still in existance. They say when we look into the sky we are seeing history and not the present.
Since this article is about things within our own galaxy, we're talking about things in the low tens of thousands of light-years... a very brief amount of time astronomically speaking.
It annoys me that I cannot seem to find a way to download Hubble's and the rest of NASA's space photographs in bulk. I use them for desktop backgrounds in slide shows under Win7, but to get more I have to spend lots of time finding them individually and then ascertain whether they would duplicate what I already have.
Those who have spent millions - billions - of dollars (and nearly as many hours) to capture NASA images that compare well with these ESA images should make more effort to cater to my laziness. Obviously...else I'll vote Republican and thus ensure that there is no money left to fund you.
the questions come in man's time...the answers come in God's time;-)
perhaps the questions themselves are timely and emerge from the God of our humanity.
How awe inspiring is the Grand Creator's pallet! Just beautiful as is everything that the master designer creates!
from left to right frame 23 and 29 are the same just moved a little to the left
and we're off !!! The Jesus freaks have arrived !!
Wow!
Might be a little redundant because of the definition of "intelligent life", but we'll never hear from ETs if they have a Tea Party ...the moon landing (and Hubble and SETI) required TAXES!
LindaD, you're right. What we are seeing today is the past. Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. The article does not specify how far the clusters are, but base on our location respective to the center of the galaxy I could guess it could be 30,000 to 50,000 light years away. So what we see today is 30, 000 to 50,000 years old. If one of those star explode today, we have to wait 30K to 50K years to see the explosion on Earth.
In terms of other planets reaching our radio signals, many people think that by sending a radio message to the space will be heard by a possible more advance civilization right away. Radio wave travel close to speed of light. The first radio signals that travel to space were very weak. It was until few decades back that we really sent powerfull radio signals to the space, one of them was from the Arecibo radio telescope (shown in the Contact movie). It will take 1000's of years to reach a planet, and 100,000's or 1,000,000's of years to reach a planet with enough intelligence to cypher or signal.
Great article Alan! Love the "Glittering Prizes". :)
Amazing!
Great article. Beautiful pictures.
"Just the Facts" is not unlike many others in this day and age. The country is full of people just like him/her. They collectively call themselves conservatives, because anything that does not directly fit into their razor thin point of view is considered a waste of money. "Me, me, me, it's all about me".
They used to call these people wacko's, despot's, zealots, fanatics, tyrants, crazy and stupid. Now, they just call themselves conservatives.
fe2o3 Nail
Which is fine, but in that case, anything that is in his interest also gets cut. Unfortunately he has never stated anything that he is interested in, so the only thing we can say is to not fund the military as that is what most right wingers are interested in.
Why do non-conservatives consider conservatives so much less than themselves? These inflamatory opinions are simplistic and leads nowhere in rational and productive communication.
How satisfying it is to go far from the city where the lights do not interfere with the shine of the stars. The Milky Way is brilliant and can change the way a man thinks about the universe.
And now we learn that it is even bigger than what we can experience with our meager senses.
Infinite is bigger than I thought.
the primary roadblock to our understanding the universe is the self serving dogma we seem to inherently favor as individuals.
the universe apparently is meant to be understood...
driftrat,
I hope that comment isn't self serving dogma.
well Grump you're right on target. The whole thing is trying to be real in a rather unreal world. The most difficulty I have is not being able to reconize when I'm acting on my own self-serving motivations. I think the key is just being fully aware of the inherent social conditioning we must deal with to be real and when I'm staring at the stars that's the best time for me.
driftrat, why, thank you.
Some time back I visited the local Thai Buddhist monastery and figured out fairly quickly the monks needed some help with their English. I go there twice a week to work with them on their ESL homework from the local community college. I get conversations going so they can practice their English.
A while back I asked one of the monks what the Buddhist position is on evolution?
Now this monk is from far northern Thailand, up in the mountains. He grew up as a farmer, temple boy, became a novice and later a monk. He has been a monk about 25 years. He hadn't seen a computer until a few months ago. The temple he belongs to in Thailand is in the middle of the mountains in the Golden Triangle and he is here to provide services to the Thai Buddhist community in NM, Texas, Colorado and Arizona.
When I asked him the question, he tilted his head to the side and looked at me quizzically. He told me the Buddhists have no position on evolution. He said the world "just is" and those scientists are learning so many wonderful things about it. He thinks science in general is just thrilling and he is most interested in what science has to offer each and every one of us.
This gentle little monk, who some might call a country bumpkin, has more sense than folks brought up through our educational system, some trained in university. He is a very devout little monk, too.
I danced a dance of vetted tunes of silver mines and dusty moons. Across the floor I am too late to catch the twirling fast debate. I thought before, to hold fates hand, tighter than my last command. Across the moments I have reached to look behind where I have breached. A lonely day I have become, never again a faucet's tongue. To if and when we must trade, the distance of the fallen blade. A mirrored clock that won't behave for points, that were never meant to be made. And now it is just to follow the way and never toss the chance to play. A lesson learned was never taught it comes to test before and not. It lies awake into the mirrors, a fortune falling through their tears. We never cried about the way We never tried not to behave Its lonely here you must abide. The poorer people have no place to hide. If only we were only side by side. My dance would capture all that you could find. Never never a moments rest a passing sadness by the best
note: It is called the Big Bang Theory for a reason. It means it is a THEORY. It is treated as such until someone disproves it, and if that happens, we move on to another theory.
That is life.
based on your comments in newsvine, you are most definitely not even remotely qualified to theorize what really happened, regardless of whether the big bang theory has or has not been disproven.
Before you attempt to pontificate on the "true nature" of the universe, I recommend a course in remedial English writing, grammar and spelling. Somebody with your dirt-poor communication skills has no business making judgments on the qualifications of various theories in astrophysics. Unless you have a PhD in the discipline, keep your simple-minded thoughts to yourself. (And learn some proofreading skills.)
Just The Facts, that you have no idea what really happened is understandable. Did you ever guess about what did happen? Have you thought about it? If it is unimportant to you would you demand that it be unimportant to everyone else and that they not ponder what might have happened? True, we don't really know what happened but, for me, it sure is fun watching these guys trying to figure it out.
It's like enjoying building a lovely piece of furniture, or painting a beautiful picture, or increasing the horsepower in your car. Fun little things we humans do just because it's fun and it's there to do.
My degrees are not in science but have no problem with physicists looking into the stars and being amazed and wondering how it came to be.
Just The Facts,
I sit here wondering why you are even posting to a Science article. You seem to have no grasp on science, no opinion on how things may work, and most importantly no interest in future studies.
Are you of the belief that religion has your answers? Just curious. You seem more suited to post in political articles, or something more single minded.
Never has a name been less suited to the one using it. His "facts" are apparently inventions of his ill-educated imagination.
It looks like 'JustTheFacts' has discovered candy mountain.
:)
you are so stupid with your comments and your ideas, wow, the best part is that you are convinced that you are right, Mr. F........365. But for a person like you......there is no hope, the only remedy is to put you on a one way trip to the edge of the galaxy.......Ignorant boo
The funny thing is, even if you could cruise through the galaxy at fantastic speed, you would never see anything like that. The "sky" would change but you would see nothing a whole lot different than what astronauts see from earth.