Just as there are countless photos of black holes on the Internet, only one photo is real, so there is only one photo of the Milky Way.
The only photo is the Spitzer Space Telescope launched by NASA. It is a 360-degree panorama of the Milky Way, which is composed of 2 million photos taken in 10. This is the photo above. Most people still don't understand it. Only professionals or astronomy enthusiasts can see the clues and get a lot of knowledge, information and fun from them.
This picture contains a lot of information, with 20 billion pixels. If printed, it needs a place as big as a sports ground to show it. Therefore, NASA decided to publish a digital version for free access by scientists and astronomy enthusiasts all over the world.
This telescope was launched in March 2008, and its orbit is unique. It has been hiding on the back of the earth and rotating around the sun at the same angular velocity as the earth, which can avoid direct sunlight, provide natural cooling for the telescope, reduce the amount of liquid helium and ensure the infrared band performance of the telescope.
Scientists send telescopes into space, because observing there can avoid the interference of the atmosphere and can see the deep space more clearly. Each orbiting telescope is actually an orbiting observatory. The original mission of Spitzer telescope was 2.5 years, but it actually served 15 years.
NASA had no choice but to retire Spitzer. The main reason was that this telescope was pulled by the gravity of the earth in its orbit around the sun, but it would gradually move away from the earth at a speed of 0. 1 astronomical unit (about150,000 km) per year. Now it is 254 million kilometers away from the earth, and there are many problems, such as the exhaustion of coolant, the stop of far infrared function, the lack of electricity and so on, which will gradually drift away.
Spitzer telescope has many deep space discoveries. For example, quasars, shocking cosmic giant eye spiral nebulae,1300 million light-years black holes, direct observation of planets, detection of130,000 light-years farthest planets, discovery of buckyball near dying stars, identification of atmospheric molecules of extrasolar planets and so on.
This huge picture of the Milky Way, if you think about it logically, you should know that it can't be a panoramic view of the Milky Way taken from the outside. Spitzer hasn't been able to walk out of the Milky Way with a diameter of 200,000 light years, but he took a picture of the Milky Way around the earth.
This is actually a photo taken in the abdomen of the Milky Way. This photo only occupies 3% of the sky, but it contains more than half of the stars in the Milky Way. In addition, because infrared rays can pass through stellar dust, it can capture the dense stellar light in the center of the Milky Way.
It turns out that those so-called "photos" are not photos, but concept maps made by computers. Some are scientists, some are artists, and some are made by enthusiasts. According to the data obtained from long-term astronomical observation, they simulated the appearance of the Milky Way through computer modeling.
Since Galileo invented the telescope, people have been interested in space for hundreds of years, and have obtained a lot of astronomical data, especially in the last hundred years, people have obtained a lot of accurate information about the orientation of astronomical objects, and observed a large number of galaxies outside the Milky Way and took real photos of these various galaxies.
Some people divide spiral galaxies into spiral galaxies, rod spiral galaxies and spiral galaxies, all of which have spiral cantilevers. However, spiral galaxies are usually larger and have more delicate cantilevers. They look fuller and brighter because they are filled with diffuse substances. Relatively speaking, the cantilever of spiral galaxies is looser; The center of the rod-shaped rotating galaxy has a rod-shaped high-density star region with two symmetrical large cantilevers and several small cantilevers.
Irregular galaxies are generally smaller galaxies, and their mass is only between 65.438+0 billion times and several billion times that of the sun, and some galaxies reach 65.438+0 billion times. They have no fixed structure and irregular shape.
Elliptical galaxies are generally large galaxies, which are considered to be large galaxies formed after the collision and fusion of galaxies, and most of them are mature and ancient stars.
According to the discovered galaxies, scientists gradually improved the appearance of the Milky Way by mastering all kinds of information and data of the Milky Way, and came to the conclusion that our Milky Way is a rod-shaped rotating galaxy, and our solar family is located on the arm of Orion, which is 26,000 light years away from the center of the Milky Way. It takes about 225 million years to orbit the center of the Milky Way at a speed of about 240 kilometers per second.
Now all the pictures of the appearance of the Milky Way circulating on the Internet are imaginary pictures or computer-modeled pictures, not photos.
That's it. Welcome to discuss. Thanks for reading.