Galactic Archeology

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Found this article by cosmologist James Bullock a very good read. It touches on some of the detective work that Jan Oort (of Oort Cloud fame) and Bertil Lindblad carried out to deduce the existence of the Milky Way halo back in the 1920s, many decades before it could be observed. Oort, it seems, was instrumental in pushing back the boundaries of both the Solar System and the Galaxy.

Here's a couple images from the article:

Relatively short exposure of NGC 474 and NGC 470.

Deep exposure of the same showing the complex structure of the galaxy haloes, relics of past merger events.

[D4N]

Nice, I would have been looking for the dew with images like that

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[Knight of Clear Skies]

One thing's for sure, I'll never look at those 'dull' elliptical galaxies in quite the same way.

[starman1969]

I advise looking up Mr Bullock's lectures on You-Tube. They are very good.

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Thanks, I will look them up sometime.