The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) continues to offer up incredible pictures of our universe. This week, a composite picture of 51 Hubble exposures plus elements from ground-based observatories made its debut.
This picture of the distant galaxy M101 is a giant pinwheel of billions and billions of stars and measures about 170,000 light-years across. A light year is not a measure of time but of distance. A ray of light takes 170,000 years to travel from one side of M101 to the opposite side. For comparison, a ray of light leaving our sun arrives at the Earth about 8 1/2 minutes later.
This is the most detailed picture of a distant gallery we have. It measures 16,000 pixels wide by 12,000 pixels high. Thanks to the incredible resolution, astronomers can see in greater detail the structure of this immense object. By looking more closely at M101 we can learn more about other galaxies, including our own Milky Way. For a high resolution version of this image visit the newsdesk of hubblesite.org
Trivia Question: If you could drive your car to our Sun how long would it take to get there? Keep to the posted speed limit of 100 km/h!
Photo Credit: NASA and ESA, STSci
Taking into account that we are 1AU (Astronomical Unit) from the Sun, and that 1AU = 149,597,892 kilometres, and that we are travelling to the Sun in our heavily shielded car at 100km/h... Here's the math:
149,597,892 / 100 = 1,495,978.92 hours.
There are 24 hours in a day, so we divide 1,495,978.92 by 24 and get 62,332.455 days.
There are 365.25 days in a year, so we divide 62,332.455 days by 365.25 and get 170.66 years.
Given time needed for washroom breaks and fast food stops (but no sleeping), round it up to 171 years!
Gil Tennant
Night Sky Tours
Posted by: Gil Tennant | March 10, 2006 at 05:41 PM