galactic nucleus
-
Globular Clusters: The Untold Story
Meet Messier 13: my sentimental favorite globular cluster. For more than a decade now, one of my favorite things has been to set up my telescopes at astronomy outreach events and show people the night sky. I have two telescopes…
-
A Full Story of Galactic Evolution
Over the course of the last few posts, we’ve explored different types of active galactic nuclei: Seyfert galaxies, double-lobed radio sources, and quasars. At the heart of each of these galaxies lies a supermassive black hole, feeding off an energy…
-
Why Galactic Nuclei Erupt
Astronomers know that when galaxies’ nuclei become active — releasing tremendous floods of energy — supermassive black holes are the ultimate culprit. We also know that supermassive black holes lurk at the hearts of most large galaxies. But most galaxies…
-
What are Seyfert Galaxies?
Meet NGC 1566, an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Fornax. To the human eye, this galaxy looks almost like any other spiral: It has a central nucleus and spiral arms, and it’s full of gas and dust. As an…
-
When Galaxies Collide
Meet the Whirlpool Galaxy, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. This was actually the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral. Specifically, the Whirlpool Galaxy is what we call a grand-design spiral: a galaxy with a very…
-
A Peek at Supermassive Black Holes
There are few things in the universe quite as exciting as black holes. They’re in all the movies — I even wrote a post a few years ago on what the movies get wrong about them! Though some movies, like…
-
The Milky Way Demystified
Alright, people…time to finish off our exploration of the Milky Way Galaxy, our home in the cosmos! For the past nine weeks, we’ve covered everything from how our galaxy was “discovered” to how it may have formed. But there’s so…
-
Exploring the Milky Way’s Nucleus
Here is an edge-on illustration of our Milky Way Galaxy. (Keep in mind that the disk actually stretches quite a bit farther out from the budge than is apparent in this illustration. Proportionally, its full diameter makes its thickness less…
