The Galaxy from the perspective of the Space Jockey

It would seem the Space Jockey must of mapped out almost every star in the sector it seems. But does it map out the hidden galaxies that are hiding in plain sight?

This part of space may look like nothing special, but it's actually a packed "galaxy city" composed of thirty ancient galaxies.This find took thousands of hours of observation before anyone noticed.

Located 10.5 billion light-years away, this galaxy cluster is the most distant and, consequently, the oldest known example of a red galaxy cluster. Red color gives us vital clues about the mass and configuration of the galaxies. We are catching this cluster way back in time in its earliest development. This discovery was found at  the Carnegie Observatories where its astronomers say it could evolve to a giant, dense cluster of over a thousand galaxies.

This area of space has been under constant observation by a number of telescopes, including Hubble, and yet nobody suggested there was a galaxy cluster there. That's because this cluster is extremely faint and essentially invisible in all but a very narrow slice of the infrared spectrum.

The astronomers were able to detect the cluster using the new FourStar camera on the Magellan Bade Telescope, which is used to provide extremely accurate measurements of the distances between Earth and thousands of different galaxies. They in turn build up a 3D map of this area of the universe. Astronomers used this data to spot a strangely high concentration of galaxies at this particular point in space and time, revealing the existence of this cluster.

Solar Wind destroying your Atmosphere

Well not ours per say because here on earth we happen to have a magnetic field protecting us. However over at Venus things get very messy when a solar storm hits its atmosphere.

The earth's magnetic field shields us from most of the effects of the solar wind. But Venus has no such field, meaning its atmosphere is the only defense against the solar wind.

Solar wind from the sun comes at about a million miles an hour, and hits close to Earth at about 50,000 miles before it hits the magnetosphere. Most of the wind flows around this magnetic shield, meaning we're protected from most, though certainly not all of what the solar wind carries. But on Venus, the solar wind routinely reaches its atmosphere, which is where NASA  observed some seriously bizarre space weather effects.

When the solar wind hits something. That something being the planet's magnetic field can sometimes create a phenomenon known as a hot flow anomaly. In these, the solar wind temporarily reverses direction, with material shooting backwards. This sudden rush of material creates an explosion. We've seen such anomalies around Earth's magnetic fields, as well as around Saturn and possibly Mars as well.

The question NASA's researchers set out to find was if these anomalies would also occur if the planet, in this case Venus, has no magnetic field.

Right now the ESA's Venus Express mission that is currently in orbit around the planet have mapped out the effect of this anomalies.

Although this satellite can't actually measure space weather, some of its instruments would have a telltale magnetic response to a hot flow anomaly that happened in its vicinity. After 3 years of data, they discovered such an explosion occurred on Venus. Exactly what these hot flow anomalies look like on Venus is an open question.

In the source below there is a video (which you should check out) showing the flow anomalies most likely occur right near the surface of the planet. Without a magnetic field to keep the explosions far away from the planet, Venus likely experiences the full brunt of these plasma shockwaves. The only good news for Venus is that without a magnetic field to excite the plasma in the solar wind, the explosions are likely a bit more mild than those that occur near Earth. However, that hardly makes up for the fact that the entire Venusian atmosphere can explode at any moment.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/venus-explosions.html

Rewriting the textbook, maybe

Somewhere in the sky theres a dwarf galaxy located just 59 million light years away, making it one of the closest galaxies near us. But because most of its stars are still just starting out, it's like a portal to the early universe.

The galaxy, whose full name I Zwicky 18, appears to be much younger than most of its galactic neighbors, including our own Milky Way. While the Hubble Telescope has picked up the faint traces of some ten billion year old stars in the galaxy, almost all the stars we can see are just a billion years old.

While it might not be a perfect mirror of young galaxies from the early universe, it's definitely the best example we can get at this close range. Young Galaxies are very poor in heavy elements, just like we would expect early galaxies to be. That all makes I Zw 18 an interesting subject of research, and the latest findings from the Center for Astrophysics of the University of Porto (CAUP) could have big implications for how we look at ancient, faraway galaxies.

Astronomers from the CAUP discovered a huge gas halo all around I Zw 18. This halo is about 16 times larger than the part of the star-filled portion of the galaxy, and in fact it is completely devoid of any stars at all. It's apparently created by the intense star formation going on in the rest of the galaxy. The energy released by the star formation makes the halo exactly the same brightness as the star-filled part of the galaxy.

That may seem something minor, but if this phenomenon holds true of other young galaxies, then astronomers might not be able to tell whether the light they see is coming from stars or gas. Until now, astronomers assumed that the luminosity of a galaxy was a good proxy for estimating the number of stars in a galaxy that's too far away.

But if up to 50% of the apparent starlight is actually coming from surrounding gas, then that would mean there are far fewer stars in these galaxies than we thought, which might mean we have to reclassify these apparently fully formed galaxies as one that are actually still only developing. This could help us see the early galaxy in a whole new light. Assuming of course, that we can actually figure out a way to tell the two different types of light apart.


http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=doi&doi=10.1051/0004-6361/201117551&Itemid=129