Astronomy Picture Of The Day - UCG 12591

Say hello to UCG 12591, the fastest spinning galaxy that we know of:



Located in the Pegasus constellation, this galaxy masses 4 times that of the Milky Way galaxy and is spinning at 480 km/second (1.8 million km/h) which is almost twice as fast as our own galaxy.

At 400 million (400,000,000) light years away, it is in it's own special class of galaxies that we classify, somewhere between Spiral and Lenticular.

This image was taken by the Hubble space telescope. I love the way the dust lanes are displayed in it, but also all the other galaxies that you can see, spread throughout the pictures.

Interesting factoid: The light we are seeing from it right now is 400 million years old, and is about the same time that trees were first appearing here on Earth.

Here is the link to the article

a reply to: eriktheawful

Awesome picture. I cant wait to see what the James Webb can do.

a reply to: eriktheawful

Interesting factoid: The light we are seeing from it right now is 400 million years old, and is about the same time that trees were first appearing here on Earth.

I been waiting for the proper thread to ask this question in. There are fainter galaxies even farther away in that image.

Those tiny swirling masses of billions of stars are just as real. The light from them has been traveling a long time, we are seeing them like they were a long time ago.

Okay so bear with me...

Imagine if the telescope they were using to resolve this image was so powerful that we could zoom right into a planet, even further, zoom right down into a (hypothetical) city street and see traffic moving...

...at what point does the telescope stop seeing the old light that travelled afar and begin to see the actual events transpiring right now on that city street in that far off galaxy?

Answer:

The light the telescope collects entering the eyepiece can only be resolved after it travelled that great distance so we would never see the current events happening there from this great distance, we would have to ago there to see that hypothetical city street, in the now.

a reply to: intrptr

Yes, the light or images we see are how they were that long ago, no mater how much you zoom in, because it is dependent upon the light getting here.

So Sirius at 8.6 light years away, if there were a planet there and you zoomed in, we would always be seeing it from 8.6 years
ago.

a reply to: eriktheawful

It's very Saturn like in the regularity of the ringed material. I wonder how big a distance it is across, it doesn't seem to say...maybe they don't know. Still, it would be nice to have a big blow up of that picture.

originally posted by: smurfy
a reply to: eriktheawful

It's very Saturn like in the regularity of the ringed material. I wonder how big a distance it is across, it doesn't seem to say...maybe they don't know. Still, it would be nice to have a big blow up of that picture.

I think they determine the distance of these distant galaxies when they are able to spot a supernova occurring in them. I don't know how they do it, don't have a link, currently.

I do know that the disk of material around galaxies, suns and planets (like saturn) form because of the center of gravity, known as the plane of the ecliptic or some such.

definition

This is gorgeous. Thanks for posting.

a reply to: intrptr

Thinking out loud here . If we can look past here where the light is hitting to a position further out then the timing of the light should be different . It would be like parking a space craft half way there and looking .Would it make any difference looking at the same object from different places at the same time ? Or if you have a telescope and I have one but they are of different strengths and we are looking at the same object at the same time from the same place does one of us see it before the other one does ?

a reply to: the2ofusr1

Different telescopes looking at it at the same time, that are both here on Earth will not mater: the light will still be 400 million years old.

Let's say you have a space telescope though, and it's parked in a orbit as far as Pluto is. Let us also say that UGC 12591 is in a direction where our space telescope is further away from it (IE behind the Earth at the time we observe it).

Then yes, the light getting to the space telescope way out there will take longer to get to it, so here on Earth, the light from it is 400 million years old, but when it gets to the space telescope out by Pluto, it will be 400 million years and 4 hours, 25 minutes old. So almost 4 1/2 hours older.

Now switch it around: say that the space telescope is way out there in the Pluto orbit again, only it's in front of Earth and UCG 12591. That means the light will get to it first, and it will be 4 1/2 hours younger than when it gets to Earth.

Thanks,

I am reminded that there is more to ATS than the Mud-pit!

have a nice day

originally posted by: eriktheawful
a reply to: the2ofusr1

Different telescopes looking at it at the same time, that are both here on Earth will not mater: the light will still be 400 million years old.

Let's say you have a space telescope though, and it's parked in a orbit as far as Pluto is. Let us also say that UGC 12591 is in a direction where our space telescope is further away from it (IE behind the Earth at the time we observe it).

Then yes, the light getting to the space telescope way out there will take longer to get to it, so here on Earth, the light from it is 400 million years old, but when it gets to the space telescope out by Pluto, it will be 400 million years and 4 hours, 25 minutes old. So almost 4 1/2 hours older.

Now switch it around: say that the space telescope is way out there in the Pluto orbit again, only it's in front of Earth and UCG 12591. That means the light will get to it first, and it will be 4 1/2 hours younger than when it gets to Earth.

Ok this is getting paradoxical. Hypothetically what if some far off planet 400 LY away was zooming in on our planet with a very powerful telescope. Would they be looking into the future?

a reply to: Naturallywired

No. They would be looking at Earth as it was in 1617

If there is anyone at Alpha Centauri looking at us right now, they'd see Earth from 2013.

Anyone at Betelgeuse would be seeing Earth from back in 1375.

a reply to: Naturallywired

Ok this is getting paradoxical. Hypothetically what if some far off planet 400 LY away was zooming in on our planet with a very powerful telescope. Would they be looking into the future?

Does light travel to the center of the universe or out ? If the outer bounds of the universe is 14 billion LY away from Earth ,does that make Earth the center of the Universe ?

a reply to: eriktheawful

My god that beautiful..
Thankyou, S&F😊

It can be confusing, I know, but there are a few things to keep in mind:

Light travels at a finite speed in a vacuum: 186,000 miles per second.

Majority of the galaxies are moving away from each other (IE Universe is expanding).

When things are close, light does not take that long to reach us. However, as they move farther apart, the longer it takes for that light to reach us.

Let's use Mars as an example:

Mars is going around the sun and is further out than the Earth is. Because of this, we go around the sun faster than Mars. In one year Earth reaches two points with Mars: When it's closest to Mars, and when it's the furthest from Mars.

Now because of how the planets tilt from the sun's solar equator, those distances will vary some, but for now, I'm going to use the absolute values.

At it's closes, we get to just under 34 million miles away from Mars. At it's furthest it's about 252 million miles.

So let's say we look at Mars through our telescope when it's closest to us, at 34 million miles. When we do, we are seeing how Mars looked 3 minutes ago, because it takes light that long to go from Mars to here (radio signals too).

As we continue in our orbit about the sun, we pass Mars and start to pull away. The further away we get, the older that light from Mars is, because the longer it takes to get to us. When we get to the furthest distance from Mars (it on one side of the sun and us on the other side), If we could look at Mars then, the Mars we are seeing is almost 23 minutes in the past.

But, as we continue around the sun, because again, we are going faster than Mars around the sun, we'll start to draw closer to it again, and the closer we get to it, the younger the light will be from it, so that if we end up only 34 million miles away from it, we will again be seeing Mars as it was only 3 minutes ago.

This holds true for all objects out in space, be it light emitted from it, reflected from it, or any type of EM emitted from it.

Here in our galaxy, local objects like stars and nebula are going around the center of the galaxy. Some things are moving faster than us, some slower, some the same. So their distances vary, and so will the time it takes light to get to us, however, space is vast, and the speeds are very slow compared to light speed, so the age of the light doesn't change much in our life times.

Most of the galaxies in our universe are moving away from each other. As they do, the light from them takes longer and longer to get here, and therefore we are seeing them for more and more in the past.

There are some exceptions though, like the Andromeda galaxy. It's actually moving towards us (and will collide one day long after all our bones are dust), so the light from it is getting "younger" or catching up. It's 2.5 million light years from us, so when you look at it, you're seeing how it was 2.5 million years ago.

However, as time goes by and it gets closer to us, that number will go down. A very long time from now, it will be only 2 million light years from us, so when it's looked at then, the light will be only 2 million years old.

originally posted by: eriktheawful
a reply to: Naturallywired

No. They would be looking at Earth as it was in 1617

If there is anyone at Alpha Centauri looking at us right now, they'd see Earth from 2013.

Anyone at Betelgeuse would be seeing Earth from back in 1375.

That means they could see Robert ii of Scotland on the ahem, throne, and over in China the Ming dynasty would be half-way through their first census system with 30million people counted.

originally posted by: the2ofusr1
a reply to: Naturallywired

Ok this is getting paradoxical. Hypothetically what if some far off planet 400 LY away was zooming in on our planet with a very powerful telescope. Would they be looking into the future?

Does light travel to the center of the universe or out ? If the outer bounds of the universe is 14 billion LY away from Earth ,does that make Earth the center of the Universe ?

If the Universe is infinite then any / every place is the center of everything, or more rightly there is no center to infinite space.

And like Eric was saying no matter how high the power of a telescope, the light that hits the eyepiece is as old as the object is far.

If you could zoom in on a person three billion light years from here, the image captured would be of that person as they existed three billion years ago.

That being said it is kind of neat to see that image in the OP as a image of that galaxy 400 million years ago. We are n fact seeing back in time.

Telescopes are 'time machines'.

a reply to: eriktheawful

Whats really neat about that image is the dust swirling around the outside of the Galaxy back lit by the stars themselves, which appear as a single 'blob' of light.

So I guess that galaxies are like star systems to a degree, our sun as an Ort cloud of cold objects, ice and dust swirling around the sun, too.

If the image isn't colored to show stars as dark objects, that is.

originally posted by: eriktheawful
a reply to: Naturallywired

No. They would be looking at Earth as it was in 1617

If there is anyone at Alpha Centauri looking at us right now, they'd see Earth from 2013.

Anyone at Betelgeuse would be seeing Earth from back in 1375.

Not to go too off topic with my reply but I saw your comment and I had to tell you, Tthis really cheered me up. Maybe there's an alien somewhere looking at our planet during a time that my papa was still alive. Maybe they could even see him.

I've probably asked this before. If it is 400 million light years away, do we have a way to pinpoint where it is currently in the celestial sky. Or is it basically in the same spot. For any object that far away, do we really know exactly where it is currently?