DID YOU KNOW THE FOLLOWING ASTRONOMY FACTS?

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INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT GALAXIES.

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* Galaxies were formed about one billion years after the big bang.

* All galaxies have a black hole at their center.

* Most galaxies have the following components: Galactic Disk, Stars, Plants, Gas/Dust, Clusters, Halo.

* Sixty percent of galaxies in the universe are ellipticals.

* Biggest galaxies are "giant ellipticals".  IC1110 is 6 M LYR across and is the biggest galaxy ever found.

* The types of galaxies are: Normal Spirals, Barred Spirals, Irregulars, Lenticular, Ring, Dwarf, & AGN.

*Milky Way galaxy has a mass of 750 B to 1 T solar masses with 200-400 B stars and is 12 B yrs old.

* The black hole at the center of our galaxy is called Sagittarius A and is 15 M miles across.

* The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxy are on a collision course in about 2 to 5 billion years.

* Galaxies are formed into Local Groups, Superclusters, and then into Filaments.

* Number of galaxies in universe 100 B to 200 B.

*Number of stars in the visible universe is 30 BT = 3x10(22).

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT BLACK HOLES.

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* The concept of black holes goes back to the 1780's when "dark stars" were envisioned.

* In 1967 American physicist, John Wheeler, dubbed the term "black hole".

* In 1972 Tom Bolton discovered the first black hole in Cygnus X-1.

* Many black holes are created when stellar mass stars collapse at the end of their lives.

* Black holes come in three sizes: stellar mass, intermediate mass, & supermassive.

* Bigger black holes are created when black holes and galaxies collide.

* The singularity in a black hole has no volume hence it has infinite density.

* The diameter of a black hole is the diameter of the event horizon.

* The sun is not big enough to become a black hole, but if it did it would be 3.7 miles in dia.

* If the earth were to become a black hole its diameter would be 0.7 inches.

* A black hole's singularity crushes time and space out of existence.

* All galaxies are now known to have black holes at their center.

* The Milky Way's supermassive black hole is known as Sagittarius A*.

* The Milky Way's supermassive black hole has a 13 million mile diameter.

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT THE RINGS OF SATURN.

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* Saturn's rings are made up of bright water ice particles.

* The rings particles are from a few microns to twenty meters in size.

* The rings extend from 42,000 miles to 300,000 miles from the center of Saturn.

* The rings are only about 30 feet thick on average.

* The rings particles are traveling around Saturn at a speed of 52,000 mph.

* Data indicates the rings are only about a few hundred million years old.

* The Spitzer Infrared Telescope recently discovered another ring around Saturn.

* This new ring is made up of dark dust particles not water ice.

* The new ring extends from 8,000,000 miles to 12,000,000 miles from the center of Saturn.

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BELOW ARE IMAGES TAKEN BY ERNIE ROSSI OF "THE PLANTATIONS ASTRONOMY CLUB"

Jupiter: taken 11-27-10 using a C11 on CGEM mount with DBK21 camera and 1200 AVI files, registax and Image Plus under good viewing conditions.

Luna Eclipse: taken 12/20/10.  Image taken about 3:20-3:25 am in Leesburg Florida.  Used a TV 4" APO at F/5.4.  A Canon 50D camera single shot at ISO 125.  Shutter set at 3"2 and using an Astro-Hutech light pollution filter.  Processed with Image Plus Cropping and resize.

BELOW ARE IMAGES TAKEN BY ERNIE ROSSI OF "THE PLANTATIONS ASTRONOMY CLUB"

NGC 3972 is about 45 million light years away located in the constellation Ursa Major.  Very lightly processing done deepsky stacker and levels in photoshop.  Four day old moon is up.  A Supernova is an exploded star.  That expoded star may get brighter then it's galaxy NGC 3972 which probably has at least 100 billion stars and normally wouldn't be observable at that great distance even in the largest telescopes.  In probably a short time this star will possibly collapse into a black hole and never be seen again.  The Supernova is the bright star just under the galaxy.

NGC 3972 bright star under this galaxy is a Supernove discovered in April 2011.  NGC 3972 is around magnitude 13, and the Supernova is around 13-14 magnitude.  CPC11, f/3.3 focal reducer 10 x 25 seconds, moon out, Leesburg Florida.