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"I want to know why the universe exist, why there is something greater than nothing."
Steven Hawking
Scientist, Space Lover
cal galaxy M87 is a type of galaxy that looks much different than our own Milky Way Galaxy. But even for an elliptical galaxy M87 is peculiar. M87 is much bigger than an average galaxy, appears at the center of a whole cluster of galaxies known as the Virgo Cluster, and shows a very high number of globular clusters. These globular clusters are visible as faint spots surrounding the bright center of M87. In general, elliptical galaxies contain similar numbers of stars as spiral galaxies, but are ellipsoidal in shape (spirals are mostly flat), have no spiral structure, and little gas and dust. This picture is number sixty on a publicly posted list of images from the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT).
This false-color radio wavelength picture of an expanding stellar debris cloud is the product of one of the largest radio astronomy experiments ever. Combining the output of 20 radio telescopes scattered around planet Earth, astronomers have produced this amazingly detailed image of a supernova remnant just over 1.5 light-years across in M82, an intense star forming galaxy 12 million light-years away. The radio astronomy technique for creating the earth-sized array of telescopes is known as VLBI (very long baseline interferometry). The individual telescopes of the array are too far apart for all their signals to be combined in "real time", so their output was recorded on magnetic tapes which were brought to a single location and correlated. This technique has produced the highest resolution astronomical observations currently possible and allows the exploration of such distant, violent galactic environments in unprecedented detail.
The famous Sombrero galaxy (M104) is a bright nearby spiral galaxy. The prominent dust lane and halo of stars and globular clusters give this galaxy its name. Something very energetic is going on in the Sombrero's center, as much X-ray light has been detected from it. This X-ray emission coupled with unusually high central stellar velocities cause many astronomers to speculate that a black hole lies at the Sombrero's center - a black hole a billion times the mass of our Sun. This image was taken in blue light by the 0.9 meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory.
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