Relating to CC105’s study of astronomy is an article from The Guardian titled ‘The Cosmic Gallery – In Pictures’. It gives beautiful depictions and descriptions of some of our galaxy’s landmarks. Here is a sample:
The Heart of The Milky Way - Some 26,000 light years and countless intervening clouds of stars, gas and dust separate Earth from the core of our galaxy. In visible light it is totally hidden from our view behind the bright star clouds of Sagittarius., but orbiting telescopes that observe at other wavelengths can pierce the veil to reveal a strange landscape of twisted dust clouds, violent stars and superhot gas. Right of centre, a blaze of blue and white reveals a huge cluster of heavyweight stars swimming in a sea of hot gas: they mark the exact centre of the Milky Way, orbiting around an invisible supermassive black hole with the mass of 4 million Suns.
The Dunes of Mars - Complex sand patterns ripple across a crater floor in the Noachis Terra region of the Martian southern hemisphere. While the northern regions of Mars are dominated by low rolling plains, the southern hemisphere is more chaotic and heavily cratered. Windblown sand accumulates in the floor of these craters, where it is frequently blown into beautiful dune patterns, some of which are unknown from Earth's deserts and probably owe their unique forms to the tiny size of Martian sand grains.
For the full article, visit bit.ly/10vKZ62.
