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So, one scene in my story has our protagonist going out to sit on the back side of the moon away from the sun, when it is like that, to ponder her fate. So, in reading about our galaxy, I had been under the impression that we were in one arm of the disk of our spiral galaxy relatively close to the centerline. I'm going to try to post this photo that shows us like WAAAAY above or below the center line, and now I am confused. Either I was mistaken about our closeness to the center line or we are like totally somewhere else.
OOPs I have to go find the pici
Comments
A couple of points...
First... Remember the moon keeps one side toward the EARTH... So, the side away from the SUN might well have this blue orb in view - from what astronauts have said it can be quite distracting (well - they said they didn't get tired of looking at it).
As to the earth's position in the Galaxy... We're in the "orion" arm... And, not on the centerline of that arm.
Here's one overhead view.
And, here's a perspective view.
Hope this helps.
Annette
No your right, we are in line
No your right, we are pretty much in line with the galactic disk. does the picture show the milkyway as fat line across the night sky or does it show a spiral?
It should look like this.
You can't edit a blog ????
OK, so as part of my new blog, I finally found the pici I was thinking of. It seems like it shows us like waaaayyyy off line with the disk?
Hmmmmm
Yeah, that's not how it would
Yeah, that's not how it would look. That looks like a galaxy that is somehow curved out of a disk shape, which I am pretty sure doesn't happen. If we were out of line with the glactic disk it would look closer to the perspective view Annette showed, though with a view like that we would be practically outside the galaxy.
Editing
You should be able to edit your own Blog Gwen. The DarkRealms Gazetteer is posted as one of my blogs and I am editing it all the time.
Really?
I don't see a button for it?
G
Tab is at the top for editing
I just used admin privileges to look at screen as you see it and yes, you have the editing tab.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
OH, now I see it !
How could I miss that button on top? Now you know why some people think I should not be allowed out alone. :)
Thanks
G
Hair color
Not blond are you???
That's ok, I am what is termed a dirty blond. If I did not wear a hat all the time my hair would become very light colored due to the sun :)
I am very light brown...
Almost blonde, but now days I use Garnier Nutrisse 70 but that is too dark, so I am gonna try 80 to see if that makes me look more like Goldie Hawn; you think that will help?
So, well the truth is that my past life was really serious and dangerous at times. As with most TG people's lives eventually just frag. And mine did just like yours. So, now as much as I can, I keep it light. We've all had enough darkness and heartbreak.
SO, to that end, I am trying to write a space comedy, where our protagonist is a ditz with a carefully hidden genius brain.
:)
That picture
Courtesy of a Google Image search, it's illustrating something called Zodiacal Light - sunlight reflecting off a lens-shaped dust cloud in our own solar system rather than the band of stars and interstellar dust comprising the Milky Way.
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
picture distortion
the zodiacal light is the shine following the sun at the center of the picture.
it's caused by all the dust that's leftover from the genesis of our solar system.
the "arc" spanning over it is indeed the milky way, but the reason for that is picture distortion. that picture is a panorama spanning about 180 degrees from ursa minor to the right to pictor on the left.
for an observer on site the milky way would be fairly straight.
Actually...
...I have it on marginally reliable authority that it would look something like this....
Love, Andrea Lena
touché
touché
Shouldn't that
Be a Milky Way dark?
We are close between
The Orion-Cygnus arm and Carina-Sagittarius arm, being closer to the former than the later. The photo you posted with the curved band is a distortion from a fish eye lens. You really don't see the Milkyway in the sky like that with the naked eye.
People say, "You don't know what you had until it's gone." Very true, but also equally true is, "You don't know what you've been missing until is arrives."
OH, Fish eye!
OH, wow, you can do that? No wonder things look so far away when I look through a telescope backwards! :)
What's your
story about?
People say, "You don't know what you had until it's gone." Very true, but also equally true is, "You don't know what you've been missing until is arrives."
What's my story about?
I want it to be rolling in the aisle Sci Fi Hijinks.
G
The galaxy we call the "Milky Way"
(Figures courtesy of Eric Idle in 1983). Meanwhile, this link and Wikipedia contain analyses the lyrics to see how they've stood up to twenty years worth of developments in our understanding of the universe.
Needless to say...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Lights Out (In a Few Biillion Years)
At the center of the Milky Way is a massive black hole. Although, weakly, we are already caught in its gravitational pull. So the bad news: In a few billion years the Sun, Earth and the Heavenly bodies will eventually be pulled into that black hole. The good news: We will be dead by then.
Even quicker...
We've only got about a billion years left before the nuclear reactions going on in the sun change, leading to extreme thermal pulsing. Over the following two billion years, it would heat up to the extent of vapourising our oceans before melting the crust and causing total atmospheric loss. By the time the sun swells into a red giant and engulfs us, all life will have long gone.
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Or retreated underground...
From what we now know about the history of the Earth, it seems quite likely that life originated deep beneath the surface of the Earth, fuelled by heat and chemical potentials. That life (it not *us*, precisely) is quite likely to continue for millions -- perhaps billions -- of years after our Sun leaves the Main sequence and at least some of us have left for greener pastures.
It's also fairly unlikely that the Sun would ever be "swallowed" by a black hole, since we orbit the centre of our personal black hole under the influence of momentum and gravity, which is unlikely to change, other than for the worse, as the Universe expands. There *are* scenarios by means of which this might happen -- the collision of our galaxy with another, with resulting tidal disruptions, for example -- but these are by no means inevitable. We've been living fairly happily with the massive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way for roughly thirteen trillion years, and will do so for quite some time to come, in all likelihood, although local disasters like nearby supernovae might well intervene.
It seems fairly certain that black holes eventually decay, however, through what's called "Hawking Radiation" after the clever fellow who thought it up. This will take place some ten to the hundredth power years or so from now, so we'll have plenty of time to get good seats.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Wellll....
Well, we ARE on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy...:-)
Just hanging around...
Like every other star which doesn't orbit the Galaxy exactly on the centre line, the Solar System swoops and dips from time to time, like any good ballroom dancer. Currently, we're a bit above the plane of the Galaxy, or so I'm told, since I haven't been out there to look for quite some time. It's also true that we probably ride a wave of invisible Dark Matter that distorts the shape of the Galaxy we see, since it's difficult to account for the present shape of our Milky Way galaxy without some external force maintaining its shape. The mysterious external force is probably not supernatural.
There was a lovely article with visualisations of our galactic density wave in Scientific American sometime last year (or so), but I don't remember exactly when.
This *may* be it:
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
where are we in the Milky Way??? Edited
Hi Gwen,
Here's another image which might help explain our location.
We are near the outer edge slightly "above" the centerline if we could consider the Milky Way to be flat.
The image (unfortunately) is "possibly copyrighted" (or so the site at which I found it - says) so it can't be used in a story but is here strictly for explanation purposes.
Anesidora
EDIT: 25 Jan 2013
As Puddintane has indicated, none of us (to our knowledge anyway) has ever been outside our galaxy to take a photo of it. The images shown are representations. http://www.astrodigital.org/astronomy/solarsystemgalaxy.html is a site which has a more detailed explanation and goes into a little more about our planets, solar system, observatories, etc as well as our Milky Way galaxy itself.
Anesidora
Well, according to The Moody Blues...
Timothy Leary may have taken a gander….
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Not keen on Milky Way,
I prefer chocolate without additives.
Mmm, pure indulgence... <3
Gwen, we are
galacticaly speaking, in the suburbs.
May Your Light Forever Shine
Actually...
We’re right in the middle of the ‘sweet spot’ in which destruction by events happening toward the centre of our galaxy is relatively unlikely, yet close enough that we have the benefit of being close enough to a largish number of supernovas that our formative planetary cloud was enriched in ‘heavy’ elements like the carbon, oxygen, and various other elements of which our bodies are made.
Just as in many real cities, the inner city is a dangerous and violent place, whilst the bucolic suburbs are boring. We, on the other hand, are ‘uptown,’ close to theatres and the high street, so it’s possible to live a civilised life without being mugged every other day.
Note: all the pictures one sees are ‘artist’s concepts’ made up of pure imagination with pictures cribbed from other galaxies and putative circles and arrows depicting a fictive Solar System, much as one might ‘holiday’ in Tahiti by photoshopping one’s own mug on the body of an actual inhabitant.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
What? you mean we don't have
What? you mean we don't have ships flying outside the galaxy to take pictures of it? You have ruined my dreams!
Wow, Thank you all for the help !
This sort of thing make me really know that I am surrounded by helpful, loving people.
Thank you
Gwendolyn