They were once thought to mark the outer limits, but today astronomers believe the Milky Way galaxy is much bigger than what we can see. To understand why, we will travel to the stars of the outer galactic disc. Far from our usual place in space, we...
One of the puzzles about our galaxy is that we know that it's had stars forming continuously for about the last ten billion years. But at the rate/ it's eating up its gas now, it's forming new stars, it should burn out that gas soon, should run out o...
Measuring the brightnesses and colors of the stars in the globular cluster, we can figure out how old they are. Here is the remarkable thing: they are very old. Globular clusters, at least the stars in the globular clusters, in many cases, are almost...
We are traveling upwards away from our solar system, out of the spiral arms of the Milky Way. In front of us, lie vast clusters of stars, satellite groups that orbit the heart of our galaxy. These are globular clusters, over 150 have been discovered....
The glowing region is the accretion disc, star debris falling inward, would turn round in the maelstrom heated by frictions to such high temperatures that it glows white hot. So at the center of our galaxy, we do have a black hole. We now know that t...
Each tag is whipping around the center of the galaxy, the particular, the most striking thing you will notice is the motion of SO2.So SO2 goes on an incredible roller-coaster ride. It comes whipping around and then back out. Something with tremendous...
Its a stunning location, but its also mysterious. These stars are not just close together. They are on the move at enormous speeds. Going to the heart of a galaxy might not be the similar to going to an amusement park. The rides are some similar to h...
In about four or five billion years, it will grow into a much bigger star, a star called a red giant. And that outer atmosphere of gases will be held so loosely by the sun at that time that the gases will be blown away gently in what I call a cosmic...
We are at a foundry here, and they are pouring molten iron from all machinery. And they are going to make parts for new machines out of that iron, so they are recycling yet, but all that iron was created and ejected into the cosmos by gigantic stars...
Once theyve caught the light of a dying star with their state of our telescopes. The detective work can begin. We collect that light and we analyze it in great detail in order to determine whats going on, whats the chemical makeup of the star, whats...