Imaging and Interpretation of Astro-Photographs
The standard textbooks indicate that the start or conception of a new star formation is the collapse of a molecular cloud. But my background in thermodynamics, heat/mass transfer and fluid mechanics leaves this superficial explanation ungratifying (at least to me?)
In four postings, I believe we have explained why a galaxy takes the spiral form it does using only two ingredients: a bunch of hydrogen and a black hole – all of which are invisible to our cameras in their
There are so many things going on in this image, and in the object itself that I admired from others’ images that I just had to image it myself. Not only is every stage of star formation (from cloud collapse
With all the talk about turbulence in Part 3, I am hoping that I didn’t leave with the impression that our galaxy has been left simply chaotic, random, and just a mess as a result. Nothing could be further from
Where I had hoped to leave you with in Part 2 is the view of a compressed molecular hydrogen cloud with the individual molecules orbiting a black hole with individual molecular angular momentum such that the outward centrifugal force on
Ou4 (The Squid Nebula) represents a nice challenge to astrophotography and I find myself going back to it almost annually to try another technique and see if my skill and available processing tools have improved. As part of my new
In Part 1 of our Galactic Spiral Structure story, we discussed two necessary ingredients that we need to bring together to create our galaxy – a relatively small, but substantial piece of condensed matter (a neutron star or black hole