Comments on: Map of Milky Way Redrawn (again)

By: Nicholos Wethington

Nicholos Wethington — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 14:29:07 +0000

Thanks for pointing that out, Arcturus. I fixed it to reflect the actual name of the array.

~Nicholos Wethington

By: IKE:) the Alien lifeform

IKE:) the Alien lifeform — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:17:48 +0000

well, carbon copies
1.
since the center of our galaxy is not circular it may influence other parts in different ways than a circular center would.
2.
I let you into a secret, BUT ONLY THIS TIME: the special motion of a galaxy is due to something called a MASSIVE BLACK HOLE. All spiral galaxy's (of any shape) have those "matter converters" at the center.

We hope you don't cease to exist before you have actually met real intelligent life…

By: Astrofiend

Astrofiend — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 04:52:41 +0000

Hell yeah – bring on ESA's Gaia. That'll mix it up a bit and keep things interesting!

By: John

John — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 23:20:30 +0000

"Here there be dragons" hahahah I love it

By: Gerald, Walnut Creek, CA

Gerald, Walnut Creek, CA — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:37:36 +0000

I recently read a study done by astronomers at Georgia State University, that focused on the timing of Ice Age epochs correlated to passages of the sun through the galaxies spiral arms. As part of the study, they mapped the path of the sun as it orbited the galaxy. They found that path to be neither a circle nor an ellipse. Instead it was a three lobed closed path. Could it be that there are three spiral arms, rather than 2 or 4?

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:44:58 +0000

Every time they redraw the map of the Milkyway the cool stuff gets further away

By: Reed

Reed — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:13:50 +0000

Do the maps represent what we see today or where the stars really are today? It takes a long time for the radio waves to reach us across so much distance, so have the stars moved noticeably compared to what we see as the apparent origin of the radio waves? I suppose that across such distances, the difference may not be significant.

By: critiqual

critiqual — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:09:36 +0000

Why is having two arms a demotion from four? What if those two arms are really BIG?

By: arcturus

arcturus — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:54:02 +0000

And actually VLBA stands for Very Long Baseline Array…

By: simon

simon — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:52:31 +0000

I did some work on shockwaves in traffic flow many years ago and yeah the waves go in the opposite direction to the traffic flow

By: Haplo

Haplo — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:24:32 +0000

Aha! Find it!

Here. You can clearly see that the jam goes backwards. (Always nice to prove the BA wrong )

By: Haplo

Haplo — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:22:56 +0000

Actually, the traffic jam travels backwards. I saw it on a video of some japanese (I think) guys that were researching some traffic thing, can't find it on youtube now, but I'm almost positive it was there.