Table of Contents
What would the sky look like near the galactic center?
If we found ourselves on a planet near the Galactic Center, our nighttime sky would light up in a blazing display every night, filled with stars as bright as the planet Venus looks to us. Dust becomes virtually transparent at these longer wavelengths, and the “smog” fades away to reveal the bright Galactic Center.
What would the sky look like in the middle of the Milky Way?
If you lived in the center of the Milky Way, you would look up at a sky thick with stars, up to 1 million times denser than we’re used to seeing. The closest star to our sun is about four light-years away; in the center of the galaxy, stars are only 0.4–0.04 light-years apart.
How do you tell if it is a star cluster?
Observations of star clusters consist of performing photometry on as many individual stars that can be measured in a cluster. Each star is plotted by its color and magnitude on the HR diagram. Shown below is one such diagram for the globular cluster M13.
How do I find the galactic center?
The center of the galaxy is located between the Tail of Scorpius and the Teapot of Sagittarius. In a dark sky, you can see clouds of “steam” ascending from the Teapot’s spout in this region.
How can you tell which star cluster is older?
By placing the stars in a globular cluster on a Hertzprung-Russell diagram, astronomers can determine the cluster’s age by looking at the main sequence turnoff point and comparing it with models of stellar evolution.
Is a star cluster bigger than a galaxy?
When comparing the two, a typical globular cluster might contain a mass of 100,000 Suns, whereas the Milky Way has nearly 1 trillion solar masses. In other words, the Milky Way Galaxy contains 10 million times more mass than a typical globular cluster.
Where are the brightest stars in a globular cluster?
In a typical position in a globular cluster (maybe halfway between center and edge), there’d be many more bright stars in the sky due to the star density. These would be distributed unevenly in the sky, with more light coming from the center of the globular cluster.
What will the sky look like at the centre of the universe?
Now you don’t have to be a genius to see how the sky will look if the nearest stars to you are this far. It will be almost like our own sky but just a lot of stars in every direction. There will be no special hike in flux received. The number density is much higher at the centre.
What would happen if the Milky Way was in a globular cluster?
These would be distributed unevenly in the sky, with more light coming from the center of the globular cluster. Depending on the globular cluster’s orbit, we might be able to see the Milky Way face-on.
How many star clusters are in the Messier catalog?
Also see list of 225 star clusters for a list of all notable star clusters. These are the brightest and most interesting open and globular star clusters listed in the Messier Catalog. Messier star clusters are predominately found in the northern hemisphere.