Show 14-The Milkyway

Now, I don't mean the candy bar, but that group
of stars that forms a SPRIAL where our sun is
20,000 lightyears from the edge and 30,000ly
from the middle.

Sure, that group of stars which at one time was 
thought to be the total universe.  Then, a guy
named HERSCHEL concluded that we live in a DISK of 
stars, but he thought we were in the middle of
the disk.  He was wrong.

Then, SHAPLEY, who is reported to have had a 13 inch 
waste, hence his name, found GLOBULAR CLUSTERS.
Well, we all know that that could only means one 
thing...and that is....(miss, could I have another 
beer please?)..yeah, skinny SHAPLEY found these
VARIABLE stars that were fluxing every 1 to 50 days. 
With this find he could TIME the flux, determine the 
distance and then actually determine how far away 
heavenly bodies were from us.  He actually kind of 
mapped where we are in our galaxy.  Mathematically of 
course. 

Then during WWII, the big one, a German born guy
was not allowed to help make huge, monsterous super 
death bombs, so he spen his time looking through the 
big telescopes all the other guys were not using 
because they were working on making huge monsterous 
death bombs.  Well, this guy whose name was BADDE 
found RED stars and BLUE stars while Hilter was 
passing out yellow stars.  Badde found that RED stars 
are like in the middle of our spiral galaxy in an 
area called the HALO..which means something totaly 
different to te 101st Airborne Division.
Badde also found that BLUE stars hangout in the
PLANE of our disk like spiral galaxy.
And from there we got this concept of star 
populations.

Star populations is like the Equal Employment 
Opportunity of the sky.  We divide or characterize 
the stars by their color...like, population 1 stars 
are new little stars with heavy elements.  They are 
second or third generation.  They are like the 
recycled stuff from blown up stars.  Population 2 
stars are the old stars left over from the big bang 
and have Helium and Hydrogen in them.

So, we can say...pass the pizza will you? that the 
GALACTIC HALO stars are OLDER tan the stars on the 
plane.  Which has nothing to do with the rain in 
Spain.

o, our spiral galaxy rotates.  That's why is it is a 
spiral anyway, and it takes about 250 million years 
to make one pass which is called a GALACTIC YEAR. 
 There have only been about 60 GALACTIC YEARS so far.

Now, how do we know today that all ths stuff is true?
Well, RADIOTELESCOPY.  Yup. because of the dust in 
our galaxy, regular telescopes do not do the trick. 
 But the RADIOTELESCOPE cuts right through the dust 
like Lemon Pledge.  And out there, all around us is 
HYDROGEN.  HYDROGEN gives of radio waves at 21 
centimeters wave length.  This is the HYDROGEN LINE.
It is this signature that helps us radio map our 
galaxy.  

Now, in the middle of our galaxy there is a great big
thing that seems to really have some pull and is 
probably the thing that keeps us all together as a 
galaxy and spins us around in the process.  Some say 
it is Chi, some say it is God, others think it is 
that place where the odd socks go when one does the 
wash.  Yet, astonomers think that just maybe, 
possibly it could be a BLACK HOLE!!!

And to think, with those million, million stars in 
our galaxy, with the billions of planets and moons in 
the universe, she had to walk into mine.

Check please!




Email:  paulborkowski@galaxy5.com