A light day is about 162,000 times the distance an average human will walk in a lifetime. That number is also about the population of Guam. So if you’re reading this from Guam, know that you and your fellow Guamanians are currently in the middle of walking a collective light day.
The biggest known black hole, TON 618, is thought to contain 66 billion solar masses — that’s two-thirds the mass of the entire Milky Way! In size, its diameter is 2600 AU, or 390 billion km — more than 40 times the diameter of Neptune’s orbit. If TON 618 were the size of the Earth, the Earth would be a 41.6 cm ball next to it, about the size of a typical house globe.
Gomez’s Hamburger is less fun than it sounds like — a sun-like star that is coming close to the end of its lifespan. The buns of the burger are made of light reflecting off dust, while the patty is formed by a dark band of dust. Dusty—Iicious.
Nebulae are the Universe’s way of showing its artsy side — giant clouds of gas and dust that form colorful, glorious space sculptures. They also represent the cosmic circle of life. Nebulae are often formed by a star dying, and they then become stellar nurseries that give birth to new stars.
The remnants of a star about five times more massive than the Sun, the Cat’s Eye Nebula is blazing hot. The main part of the nebula is between 7,000 and 9,000°C, while a larger, fainter halo surrounding the nebula is 15,000°C, far hotter than the surface of the Sun!
You might think this is a cool name for a nebula, but look up “homunculus” and you’ll realize that it’s an incredible insult.
NGC 2392 is also referred to as Clownface Nebula or formerly Eskimo Nebula, because a white dwarf is located in the middle of the nebula, surrounded by a bright bubble of material moving away from the star. This makes the nebula look like a face with a parka around it. What’s interesting about this nebula is that the dying star in the middle is very similar to our Sun, so it can serve as a perfect reference to the ultimate fate of our Sun in about five billion years.
Shaped like a giant hourglass with an eye in its middle, the Hourglass Nebula is one of the most beautiful objects that can be observed from Earth. The eye in the center is a red giant, emitting high—energy solar winds that are spread around the star in two flattened rings. These ejected particles emit light as a result of being trapped in the star’s complex magnetic fields.
The best way to visualize the speed of light — 186,000 miles or 300,000 km per second — is to picture looking at the Earth from far away and seeing a ball of light spinning around the Earth 7 times per second. Now imagine that ball of light takes off from the Earth in a straight line, going the same speed. Think of how unfathomobly far away that ball of light is a year later. That’s a light year. Or, we can try this comparison: If Switzerland were a grain of sand, a light year would be the circumference of the Earth.
Still — in the grand scheme of things that is still not that much. If you travel a light year from Earth you end up in the middle of nowhere, still way closer to Earth than to anything outside the Solar System.
A great way to take a light year size cloud down a notch is to make fun of it like a schoolyard bully. Named for its embarrassingly high sulfur content, the Rotten Egg Nebula may be glorious and vast, but that doesn’t mean humans have to give it any respect.
Keishinrei