Episode 134: The State of the Galaxy
The image shows a central portion of the Hubble Deep Field, created from exposures taken in 1995. The Hubble Deep Field covers a piece of sky about 1/13th the diameter of the full Moon.
Credit: NASA
It's time for our state of the galaxy address. We’ll be talking about how humans figured out that we are living in a galaxy, and how science fiction represents other galaxies. We're also joined by Molly Peeples, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University, who studies where galaxies come from, and what they’re actually made of.
Notes, Citations, & Etc.
FOGGIE project
An incredible video of a galaxy forming, created with data from FOGGIE — seriously watch this now because it is so badass.
The Book of the Constellations of the Fixed Stars, by Abd-al Rachman Al-sufi
Key to the Blissful Abode or Key to Happiness, by Ibn-al Qayyim
The Messier Catalogue (as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope)
The Hooker Telescope that Edwin Hubble used to show that there are galaxies beyond the Milky Way
A story by Leila McNeill on the BBC about how Henrietta Leavitt discovered standard candles, which is hwat enabled Hubble to discover those galaxies with the Hooker telescope.
The famous 1995 Hubble Deep Field Image, via NASA