Lesson Plans Glassifying Galaxies (University of California - Hastings and Hastings) Provides two lessons to help students learn how to classify galaxies. 3-01 Materials Earth from Far, Far Away and Very, Very Close (Florida State University - Davidson) "View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons." 9-02 M81 (Bode's) Galaxy (MSNBC News) "This beautiful galaxy is tilted at an oblique angle on to our line of sight, giving a "birds-eye view" of the spiral structure. The galaxy is similar to our Milky Way, but our favorable view provides a better picture of the typical architecture of spiral galaxies. Though the galaxy is 11.6 million light-years away, NASA Hubble Space Telescope's view is so sharp that it can resolve individual stars, along with open star clusters, globular star clusters, and even glowing regions of fluorescent gas." 05-07 Stars and Galaxies - Newest Pictures (Galex) Provides pictures of stars and galaxies using a new ultraviolet light telescope, as well as from other sources. 12-03 Multimedia Pictures and Sounds of Galaxies (CosmicLog.msnbc.msn.com) "Help yourself to the biggest pictures and the coolest sounds from space." 06-08 News -01-12-06 Best Images of 2006 (Space.com) Provides Space.com's 20 nominees for best space images for 2006. 01-06 Papers Andromeda Galaxy (Discovery.com) Provides a short description of our nearest spiral galaxy. 3-02 Andromeda Galaxy (Wikipedia.org) "The Andromeda Galaxy (also known as Messier Object 31, M31, or NGC 224) is a giant spiral galaxy in the Local Group, together with the Milky Way galaxy." 10-04 Andromeda Galaxy Way Bigger Than Thought (CNN News) "The discovery of several large, metal-poor stars located far from the center of the Andromeda galaxy suggests our nearest galactic neighbor might be up to five times larger than previously thought." " 'We're typically used to thinking of Andromeda as this tiny speck of light, but the actual size of the halo...extends to a very large radius and it actually fills a substantial portion of the night sky,' said study team member Jason Kalirai of the University of California, Santa Cruz." 01-07 Astronomical Distances (Wikipedia.org) "The parsec (symbol pc) is a unit of length used in astronomy. It stands for 'parallax of one arc second'." "One parsec is defined to be the distance from the Earth to a star that has a parallax of 1 arcsecond. It is, therefore, approximately:...3.261630751 light years." "One kiloparsec, abbreviated 'kpc', is one thousand parsecs, or 3,262 light years. Kiloparsecs are typically used to measure distances between parts of a galaxy." "One megaparsec, abbreviated 'Mpc', is one million parsecs, or 3,261,564 light years. Megaparsecs are typically used to measure distances between neighboring galaxies and galaxy clusters." "One gigaparsec, abbreviation 'Gpc', is one billion parsecs — one of the largest distance measures used. One gigaparsec equals 3.261564 billion light years, or roughly ¼ the distance to the horizon of the observable universe (dictated by the cosmic background radiation). Gigaparsecs are typically used to measure distances to supergalactic structures, such as clusters of quasars or the Great Wall." 01-07 Close Encounter With a Cluster (CosmicLog.com) "If galaxies are your thing, you simply have to zoom in on the Hubble Space Telescope's latest picture of the Coma Cluster, one of the densest collections of galaxies found to date." 06-08 Galaxies (Wikipedia.org) "A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system that consists of stars, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and an unknown dark matter." 01-07 Galaxies Collide with a Stellar Bang (CNN News) "Astronomers have found what they are calling the perfect cosmic storm, a galaxy cluster pile-up so powerful its energy output is second only to the Big Bang." "The cluster collision is the most powerful ever recorded and a fresh glimpse of the cluster merging process, where great swarms of galaxies smash into one another to form a single galactic structure." "Researchers said the Abell 754 observations match closely with those predicted by computer models and are a sign that astronomers are on the right track with theories of galactic evolution and the structure of the universe." "NASA researcher Richard Mushotzky, U.S. project scientist for the XMM-Newton observatory, told reporters that the research also adds to the understanding of dark matter and dark energy, two invisible phenomena that can determine the rate of merging galactic clusters." " 'In some ways, galaxy clusters are the universe in a box,' Mushotzky said. 'If we can understand them with some detail, we can apply those findings to the universe as a whole." 9-04 Galaxies Topics (Wikipedia.org) Provides a table of contents on galaxies. 01-07 Galaxy Blasted by a Black Hole (MSNBC News) "A powerful jet of particles from a "supermassive" black hole has been seen blasting a nearby galaxy, according to findings from the US space agency." 12-07 Groups and Clusters of Galaxies (Wikipedia.org) "Galaxy groups and clusters are super-structures in the spread of galaxies of the cosmos. Matter throughout the visible Universe has, over the course of the Universe's history, aggregated into a range of large-scale structures under the influence of gravity. Groups and clusters may contain from ten to thousands of galaxies. The clusters themselves are involved in larger groups called superclusters." 10-04 How Far Can We See at Night? (Space.com - Weinstock) "On a clear dark night away from city lights, the star-spangled heavens can create an overwhelming sense of infinity. Seemingly countless points of light, so far away, urge one to contemplate the insignificance of a lone planet amid the incomprehensible breadth of the universe." "Almost all of the sky objects visible to the naked eye are stars that reside in our galaxy. In fact the bulk of those you can see are relatively nearby, within a few thousand light-years. Most are actually within a few hundred light-years, with the exception of a few intrinsically brilliant stars that are many thousands of times more luminous than the Sun." "For comparison, the Sun is about 26,000 light-years from the galactic center, orbiting on an outer spiral arm. The galaxy itself is about 100,000 light-years wide. We see most of its contents only with powerful telescopes working at various wavelengths of light not visible to humans." 12-03 Hubble Deep Field (Discovery.com) Provides faint images from a tiny sliver of the universe by pointing the Hubble Telescope in the same place for 10 days. "By studying Hubble deep field, scientists hope to answer many questions about the number, evolution, and ultimate fate of galaxies in the universe." 3-02 Hubble Finds Most Distant Galaxies (CNN) Includes a picture of galaxies believed to be 95 percent back to the time when the universe began, using an infrared camera. Hubble Sequence (Wikipedia.org) "The Hubble sequence is a classification of galaxy types developed by Edwin Hubble in 1936. It is also called the tuning-fork diagram as a result of the shape of its graphical representation." 10-04 Milky Way Galaxy (Discovery.com) Provides a tour of major objects in our galaxy, as well as other nearby galaxies. 3-02 Motion of Matter at the Center of a Galaxy Filmed (Nature - Clarke) Provides the first animation of the movement of matter at the center of a galaxy. 3-02 Our Galaxy - Age of Galaxy Finally Estimated (BBC News) "A team working with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile report that our galaxy is 13,600 million years old, give or take 800 million years. The observations were made by measuring the content of the element beryllium in two stars contained in a so-called globular cluster in our galaxy. The beryllium content of stars rises with time, so it can be used as a 'cosmic clock' to calculate their ages." 8-04 Our Galaxy - From the Outside (BBC News) "This [picture] is our home galaxy as it might look if you could travel outside it and look back." 8-04 Our Galaxy Has a Black Hole in the Center (BBC News) "There now seems little doubt that a supermassive black hole resides at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way." 8-04 Questions About Galaxies (ASK and Astronomer for Kids) Provides questions and answers for kids and adults. 01-06 Stars (Wikipedia.org) "A star is any massive gaseous celestial body in outer space. Stars appear as shining points in the nighttime sky that twinkle because of the effect of the Earth's atmosphere and their distance from us. The Sun is an exception: it is the only star sufficiently close to Earth to appear as a disc and to provide daylight." 10-04 Types of Galaxies (Discovery.com) "Galaxies are enormous swarms of stars, dust, gas, and dark matter held together by gravity." The types (or shapes) are spiral, elliptical, and irregular. 3-02 Unusual Galaxies (Discovery.com) Describes the Siamese Twins, the Sombrero Galaxy, and the Polar Ring Galaxy. 3-02 Virgo Cluster of Galaxies (Discovery.com) Presents the nearest cluster of galaxies. "Our own cluster of galaxies, the Local Group, is part of a larger collection of over one hundred clusters called the Local Supercluster. At the center of this supercluster is the Virgo cluster. "The Virgo cluster is also the largest cluster of the supercluster, with over two thousand galaxies of different sizes and shapes." "At about 50 million light-years away, the Virgo cluster is the closest cluster to the Milky Way. And its mass is so great, our Local Group is being pulled toward the Virgo cluster at about 168 miles per second." The speed of 168 miles per second is approximately 600,000 miles per hour. 3-02

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