A Galaxy of Dynamic Gases

A Galaxy of Dynamic Gases

The success of n-body numerical simulation to predict the motion of planets and stars cannot be denied.  At the same time, the erroneous application of these model to intra-galactic objects and galaxies themselves have led to a popular narrative that is full of magic and other non-sense.  In this ambitious posting, I have put together the astrophysical data in a different way – one that looks at objects from a more scientific and engineering point of view.  This data has been used to show that the various objects in space should be considered as continuum bodies, rather than collections of particles.    Classical physical laws and concepts are used to show how and why many of the phenomenon we see and

Anatomy of the Orion Nebula – Imaging and imagining 3-D Gas Bodies

Anatomy of the Orion Nebula – Imaging and imagining 3-D Gas Bodies

It is easy to forget that our 2-D images are actually representations of 3-D gas bodies, that are acting according to 4-D dynamics. In day to day life, we have many clues that we can rely upon including parallax views, perspective rules, lights and shadows, and actual physical interaction that we can use to assess the nature of objects in 3-D and 3+1 space. Unfortunately many of these clues are absent or confusing in our deep space objects. In this post, we analyze a 2-D image of the Great Orion Nebula and stellar nursery including its shape and orientation in 3-D space. Along the way, we will present an understanding of the three principle gas types in deep space photography

Video Post – How Friction Creates a Galaxy’s Spirals

Video Post – How Friction Creates a Galaxy’s Spirals

The videos presented here represent a culmination of my analysis of spiral galactic structure.  The conventional explanations of how spiral work try to shoe-horn the partial differential equations of Navier-Stokes and Maxwell, into the ordinary ones of astro-physicist’s simulations and this leads to gross misrepresentations.  It is like an illness in the popular scientific community that is directly related, although less political, to the climate simulators and their ODE simulations of our dynamic, convective atmosphere.  “Unicorn” constructs, such as gravity density waves are really how the ODE solutions are tricked into giving realistic results.   Shortcuts to PDEs, such as “Ram Pressure”, are elevated to the position of real explanations.   There videos take a overview look at how spiral galaxies really

The Sunflower Galaxy and Dynamic Complexities

The Sunflower Galaxy and Dynamic Complexities

At first glance, Messier 63 (M63 for short or aka “the Sunflower Galaxy”) appears to be a break from the traditional spiral structure of galaxies and represent a new type of galaxy termed a “flocculent” class.  It was thought that the stars formed clumpy clouds gathered together as clumps, like strands of wool form clumps of wool – even on the sheep.    In chemical engineering, we often use agents that make particles suspended in a fluid clump together to form larger particles ,so that gravity can overcome the suspension and separate the particles from the fluid.   I like to thing that the word flocculate (or its sorter “floc”) comes from the word “flock”, as in a flock of sheep,

Star Nucleation Amped Up by Tidal Effects

Star Nucleation Amped Up by Tidal Effects

Spiral galaxies can vary widely in the amount of stars they are generating. It is asserted that star nucleation, via the imposition of high pressure over small volumes of molecular cloud, is the rate determining step. Turbulence of molecular clouds in galaxies is greatly increased when the chaotic, but stable, spiral galactic structure is disturbed by tidal effects of nearby galaxies. In this posting, the three main galaxies of the Leo triplet are used to illustrate and link the chain of events from tidal influence to rapid star production in the galaxies we image.

The Hidden Galaxy – Now you see it

The Hidden Galaxy – Now you see it

IC342/Caldwell 5 – The Hidden Galaxy in LHaRGB Planewave CDK 12.5in; AP 1100GTO AE; QHY600M, – Baader Cmos Opt Broadband and 6.5nm Ha FiltersL: (50 x 180s, Bin 1, Gain 100); H: (29 x 720s Bin 1, Gain 100); R,G,B: (25,23,22 x 210s, Bin 1, Gain 100)Total integration time = 12.4 hrs (Feb 10-12, 2025) Maple Bay, BC, Canada For full resolution, downloadable image, visit my gallery at Victoria RASC Zenfolio or Astobin The Hidden Galaxy gets its name from its position in the sky, near the Milky Way and partly obscured by our galaxy’s dust.   If not for the dust, IC342 would be visible with the naked eye and occupy about the same size as the moon. In reality