Talk about your ego deflater … or maybe its a call to action, like being the underdog! Come on humans, we know you can get out of that depressing hood you’re living in!
Whatever it is, the latest exercise in mapping the Milky Way and our place in it by NASA scientists shows that not only are we a speck in the mass of stars, but a speck in the mass of stars living in a minor wing of the four-spiral galaxy we dare call our own.
Click for larger view: Astronomers using data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, are helping to trace the shape of our Milky Way galaxy’s spiral arms. This illustration shows where WISE data revealed clusters of young stars shrouded in dust, called embedded clusters, which are known to reside in spiral arms. The bars represent uncertainties in the data. The nearly 100 clusters shown here were found in the arms called Perseus, Sagittarius-Carina, and Outer — three of the galaxy’s four proposed primary arms. Our sun resides in a spur to an arm, or a minor arm, called Orion Cygnus.
Here’s what NASA was up to:
… researchers have turned to a new mapping method that takes advantage of data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Using WISE, the research team has discovered more than 400 dust-shrouded nurseries of stars, which trace the shape of our galaxy’s spiral arms. Seven of these “embedded star clusters” are described in a new study published online May 20 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
“The sun’s location within the dust-obscured galactic disk is a complicating factor to observe the galactic structure,” said Denilso Camargo, lead author of the paper from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.
The results support the four-arm model of our galaxy’s spiral structure. For the last few years, various methods of charting the Milky Way have largely led to a picture of four spiral arms. The arms are where most stars in the galaxy are born. They are stuffed with gas and dust, the ingredients of stars. Two of the arms, called Perseus and Scutum-Centaurus, seem to be more prominent and jam-packed with stars, while the Sagittarius and Outer arms have as much gas as the other two arms but not as many stars.
And the bigger-yet picture …
This artist’s concept depicts the most up-to-date information about the shape of our own Milky Way galaxy. We live around a star, our sun, located about two-thirds of the way out from the center. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech)
Home, home on the range … where the deer …
Oh, sorry. Was feeling all nostalgic for a minute there. Now, where were we. YES – We’re a blip in a lesser arm of a mediocre galaxy. Let’s say we try to survive long enough to see what a real arm of our galaxy holds.
Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.
from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1dfBlSO
Talk about your ego deflater … or maybe its a call to action, like being the underdog! Come on humans, we know you can get out of that depressing hood you’re living in!
Whatever it is, the latest exercise in mapping the Milky Way and our place in it by NASA scientists shows that not only are we a speck in the mass of stars, but a speck in the mass of stars living in a minor wing of the four-spiral galaxy we dare call our own.
Click for larger view: Astronomers using data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, are helping to trace the shape of our Milky Way galaxy’s spiral arms. This illustration shows where WISE data revealed clusters of young stars shrouded in dust, called embedded clusters, which are known to reside in spiral arms. The bars represent uncertainties in the data. The nearly 100 clusters shown here were found in the arms called Perseus, Sagittarius-Carina, and Outer — three of the galaxy’s four proposed primary arms. Our sun resides in a spur to an arm, or a minor arm, called Orion Cygnus.
Here’s what NASA was up to:
… researchers have turned to a new mapping method that takes advantage of data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Using WISE, the research team has discovered more than 400 dust-shrouded nurseries of stars, which trace the shape of our galaxy’s spiral arms. Seven of these “embedded star clusters” are described in a new study published online May 20 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
“The sun’s location within the dust-obscured galactic disk is a complicating factor to observe the galactic structure,” said Denilso Camargo, lead author of the paper from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.
The results support the four-arm model of our galaxy’s spiral structure. For the last few years, various methods of charting the Milky Way have largely led to a picture of four spiral arms. The arms are where most stars in the galaxy are born. They are stuffed with gas and dust, the ingredients of stars. Two of the arms, called Perseus and Scutum-Centaurus, seem to be more prominent and jam-packed with stars, while the Sagittarius and Outer arms have as much gas as the other two arms but not as many stars.
And the bigger-yet picture …
This artist’s concept depicts the most up-to-date information about the shape of our own Milky Way galaxy. We live around a star, our sun, located about two-thirds of the way out from the center. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech)
Home, home on the range … where the deer …
Oh, sorry. Was feeling all nostalgic for a minute there. Now, where were we. YES – We’re a blip in a lesser arm of a mediocre galaxy. Let’s say we try to survive long enough to see what a real arm of our galaxy holds.
Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.
from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1dfBlSO
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