NGC 1097 is HUGE and FAR, FAR Away and Dinosaurs are OLD!! Ed K not so much!!
There’s nothing that can make me feel like a tiny,tiny, speak then to contemplate the enormity of the universe. The photo of the day, today, at Wikipedia was a false-color photograph of NGC 1097 a barred spiral galaxy.That is only 45 MILLION light-years away from Earth!
NASA/JPL-Caltech The photograph was taken infrared light by the Spitzer Space Telescope.
NGC 1097 is located in the constellation Fornax. The galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center, which is 140 million times the mass of the Sun, as well as two satellite galaxies. The photograph was taken ininfrared light by the Spitzer Space Telescope. Ok so first it is hard to imagine the distance that NGC 1097 is from earth and then to think of the size of the black hole……!!! It is also mind-boggling to me that the galaxy was discovered by William Herschel on October 9, 1790!!
In addition to the above discussion of NGC1097 I also read at Wikipedia today, that recently, scientists announced the discovery of Kepler-452b, the first potentially rocky exoplanet discovered in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star.(You know when you consider the vastness of the universe and the billions of planets to think that we are alone in the Universe is silly…..From Wikipedia…
Kepler-452b is an exoplanet orbiting the G-class star Kepler-452. It was identified by the Kepler space telescope and its discovery was publicly announced by NASA on 23 July 2015.[2] It is the first potentially rocky super-Earth[4] planet discovered orbiting within the habitable zone of a star very similar to the Sun.[5] It is the sixth-most Earth-like exoplanet known to date.
The planet is about 1,400 light-years away from the Solar System; at the speed of the New Horizons spacecraft, about 59,000 km/h (37,000 mph), it would take approximately 26 million years to get there.
Once again look at the distances 1,400 light-years – 26 million years to get there. I can hear it now from the back of the spaceship……20 million years of “are we there yet!” “can we stop soon!!”
Ok so when I think of the enormity of space, galaxies along with their vast distances I feel microscopic….
When I looked at what happened on this day in history at On This Day,I read that on July 29, 2006 Researchers announced that two ancient reptiles had been found off Australia. The Umoonasaurus and Opallionectes were the first of their kind to be found in the period soon after the Jurassic era. Both of these reptiles lived about 115 million years ago!!
Here’s some information about both of the animals from Wikipedia…..
Umoonasaurus
Umoonasaurus is an extinct genus of plesiosaur[1] belonging to the family Leptocleididae.[3] This genus lived approximately 115 million years ago (Aptian-Albian) in shallow seas covering parts of what is now Australia. It was a relatively small animal around 2.5 m (8 ft) long. An identifying trait of Umoonasaurus is three crest-ridges on its skull. Read More
Opallionectes andamookaensis (meaning “the opal swimmer from Andamooka”) is the name given to a 5 m (16 ft) long plesiosaur, which is thought to have lived during the early Cretaceous period (Lower middle Aptian), 115 million years ago, in shallow seas covering what is now Australia.
An opalized partial skeleton (including vertebrae, ribs, limb elements, teeth, and associated gastroliths) of the animal has been discovered in an opal mine at Andamooka in South Australia and described by Kear in 2006. It had fine needle like sharp teeth similar to those of nothosaurs and were probably used to trap small prey such as fish and squids. It is considered a sort of missing link between the much older plesiosaurs, living 165 million years ago, and the ones near the end of the Cretaceous, 66 million years ago, between which there had been a gap in the fossil record. Read More
When I think of 115 MILLION years ago my 63 years of life seems pretty puny, eh?? Hum, let’s see if we are traveling to NGC 1097 at the speed of 37,000 mph it would take 26 million years to get there that’s 52 million years per round trip or 104 million years to go to NGC 1097 twice!….. Boy do I feel small, but surprisingly not that old!!!
Featured Image: Artist’s concept of Kepelr 452b
