Repetitive large scale structures in the Milky Way.

[ollypenrice]

A reprocess of this vast mosaic captured by Yves Van den Broek allowed me to pull out the faint nebulosity more fully and I was struck by something strange.

It's easiest to see in the nebula to the left of the North America. You'd think you had double vision because its left hand side shows the same outlines twice, slightly offset from each other. Then there's a large body of dust upper left of centre and this has long vertical extensions coming out if it above and below, again showing parallel repetions. There are also some horizontal repetitions in the view as well. The separation between repetitions seems to be roughly the same scale everywhere.  In fact these offset repetions make the image a little queazy to look at since they have that offset double vision effect.

What might cause this? Some kind of density or pressure wave passing through the dusty medium?

Olly

 

Edited October 17, 2022 by ollypenrice

[vlaiv]

3 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

It's easiest to see in the nebula to the left of the North America.

Could you somehow mark the regions of interest in small image - just some sort of pointer so I can identify what you mean.

 

[markse68]

I see a praying mantis

[ollypenrice]

1 hour ago, vlaiv said:

Could you somehow mark the regions of interest in small image - just some sort of pointer so I can identify what you mean.

 

Sure. I see lots of roughly parallel dark lines of dense dust. The nebula which repeats the shape of its own edge is arrowed.

 

[Alien 13]

I see so many scary faces in the image I cant look anymore 😱

Alan

[vlaiv]

36 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Sure. I see lots of roughly parallel dark lines of dense dust. The nebula which repeats the shape of its own edge is arrowed.

I think that you might be seeing a bit more than it is actually in the image. That is quite understandable, after all, our brain is hardwired to recognize patterns, and sometimes we are "too good" at it.

There is however phenomena that might explain part of it.

when things swirl around in galaxy disk - they tend to align themselves sort or parallel, so there is no wonder if dust filaments are on average aligned along some direction if you look at part of a galaxy (spiral one at least).

 

[billhinge]

I suppose its possible, this JWST pic has curly whirly bits in it

[ollypenrice]

11 hours ago, vlaiv said:

I think that you might be seeing a bit more than it is actually in the image. That is quite understandable, after all, our brain is hardwired to recognize patterns, and sometimes we are "too good" at it.

There is however phenomena that might explain part of it.

when things swirl around in galaxy disk - they tend to align themselves sort or parallel, so there is no wonder if dust filaments are on average aligned along some direction if you look at part of a galaxy (spiral one at least).

 

That's a thought.

Olly

 

[tomato]

That’s an interesting observation, there are other parallel ridges in your magnificent image that are not highlighted. The question is if there is some phenomenon at work to create these or are they just random? I noted something similar in the region around Sadr but these were smaller and more well defined, and a theory had been postulated as to their possible origin. Perhaps there is a thesis out there by a budding Astrophysicist, but then again space is a big place.