Stephan's Quintet
(AP Photo/Nasa via Pa)
NASA's telescopes keep generating these incredible images of outer space. This one shows the central region of a group of galaxies 300 million light-years away known as Stephan's Quintet. Astronomers say that this distant galaxy is generating a 'sonic boom' of cosmic proportions, caused by one of the galaxies falling towards the others at high speed, ploughing through a cloud of hydrogen gas travelling at 540.6 miles per second - 100 times faster than the speed of sound.
It makes me feel like a speck of dust in a tornado, but it also makes me feel like part of something incomprehensibly magnificent.
Labels: science
posted by Elizabeth at 1:11 PM
2 Comments:
Makes the "galaxies of stars" at the Oscars look a bit dull, don't you think?
You don't need a telescope to see the glitter, but it's such a bore.
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