kenobi-wan-obi: Help Hubble Telescope Scientists Study Amazing…
Help Hubble Telescope Scientists Study Amazing New Galaxy Photos
A newly released Hubble Space Telescope mosaic image shows the nearby spiral galaxy M83 in rich detail and scientists want your help to understand exactly what they are seeing in the cosmic view.
Also known as the Southern Pinwheel, the galaxy lies 15 million light-years away in the constellation of Hydra. Bold magentas and blues indicate the galaxy blazes with star formation, and the galactic panorama depicts stellar birth and death on a vast scale of 50,000 light-years, encompassing thousands of star clusters, and hundreds of thousands of stars, as well as supernova remnants, the last vestiges of dead stars. You can also see a video exploring the galactic image.
But while this Hubble Space Telescope image is striking, it also serves a practical purpose. A new project called “STAR DATE: M83” asks amateur astronomers to use the new M83 image to estimate ages for approximately 3,000 star clusters. Interested space aficionados can use the presence or absence of the pink hydrogen emission, the sharpness of individual stars, and the color of the clusters to estimate ages, a task which computers would have trouble accomplishing.
Reposted from http://ift.tt/1k45WkO.
