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