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 work, and I guarantee that the real explanation is much more interesting, even if the “movies” created by simulators are absent.
The Coma (Berenices) Galaxy Cluster
R,G,B: (36,41,37 x 180s, Bin 1, Gain 100); Ha:(12x720s, Bin 1, Gain 100);L:(60 x 160s, Bin 1,Gain 100)
Total integration time = 10.8 hrs (Apr 26, 2025) Vancouver Island, BC, Canada
The galactic cluster in Coma Berenices is likely my favourite to image. Unlike the larger Virgo cluster, it has a greater portion of spirals / lenticular than the more mature, and less interesting ellipicals. It’s like the ability to create one’s own Hubble deep field, except the galaxies are not quite so old and far away.
This is my first video post pertaining to aprealspace.com. To save space, I have posted the videos to my revamped Youtube channel because these videos are rather large. These first videos were recorded and enhanced from a presentation I gave on October 10, 2025 at the University of Victoria to my local chapter of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Thanks to Dave, Joe, Kirsten, and Garry at Victoria RASC for your help in the presentation and creation of the videos.
If you are at all interested in Astonomy, and I image you are if your are here, then I highly recommend you find a local astronomy club and join in.
Part A: Incorporating Thermodynamics into our Astro-Science
In Part A, I demonstrate that even though galactic gases are very rarefied compared to our earth’s atmosphere, they have to be treated as thermodynamic bodies. Trying to treat molecules as individual atoms, influenced and even orbiting by gravitational forces alone is not correct. Rather, they collide a lot more frequently than imagined, have free paths far, far smaller than the dimensions we are concerned with.
Thus gas molecules are subject to the laws of thermodynamics and treated as thermodynamic bodies, where gases don’t collapsed under their own gravity alone, and exhibit properties we liken to real gases, rather than ideal ones. The video culminates in the chemical and thermodynamic properties of the various regions within the spiral disc, and a discussion on how just because a simulator has been empirically tuned to deliver a desired results, doesn’t mean it is right. Including thermodynamics into a simulator requires heat, as transported by convection and radiation, something I don’t believe the n-body simulators that astronomers rely upon actually do.
Part B: Incorporating Fluid Dynamics into our Astro-Science
Viscous drag or fluid friction essentially adds a third force to the gravity / centrifugal dynamics that naturally creates spirals amongst many other phenomena that we image as astro-photographers. It presents a big problem that astronomers shy away from because it delivers energy dissipation to be accounted for in our models, and that their simulators be re-written to accommodate partial differential equations in space and time, rather than simpler ordinary differential equation in time only. (Rest assured I won’t be showing the compressible Navier Stokes equation in the video, I will be using everyday analogs instead and the video isn’t that mathematical).
The end result is that a the dreaded Winding Problem is demonstrated to be a fallacy, and that the spirals are a natural result of including the effects of friction. In the end, the description of the galaxy as a buoyancy problem, a heat engine powered by the stars, a study in the chemistry of hydrogen, and demonstration of heat and mass transfer in a non-linear dynamic, chaotic system – all at the same time! As a finale, I take a kick at dark matter as not needed to describe the behavior of a spiral galaxy at all.
(An aside for some astronomers: you may have some baryonic reason for keeping dark matter, but I think this is more likely to be confirmation bias – there is no need to change the baryon proportions).
As it turns out, it is much quicker for me to make video blogs, than text ones. Please let me know what you prefer going forward – it might make a difference.
