#AstroMiniBR: What TV Show Could The Aliens Be Watching?

every week, Technology World and #AstroMiniBR brings together five relevant and entertaining astronomical curiosities produced by collaborators. twitter profile To spread the knowledge of this science, which is the oldest!

#1: A heart in the constellation Orion

The famous Orion Nebula is a star forming region 40 light-years to 1500 light-years from Earth!

Visible to the naked eye in very clear, dark skies and away from cities. It is in the constellation Orion, just below the Belt of Orion (Three Marys).#AstroMiniBR pic.twitter.com/BJH3E4tfIs

— Giovanna Liberato (@liberato_gio) January 25, 2023

Officially cataloged as NGC 1976 and M42, the Orion Nebula is one of the most famous and famous celestial objects in our sky. It is a huge, bright, diffuse molecular cloud that spans 24 light-years in space and is faintly visible to the naked eye on dark nights.

Located on the sword of the fictitious Orion figure in the constellation Orion, the nebula is about 1,350 light-years from Earth and consists of hundreds of very hot and massive young stars grouped around a cluster of four stars. It is known as a trapezoid. The combined radiation from these stars activates and ionizes the gas molecules in the cloud, and this result gives the nebula its characteristic glow.

The Orion Nebula was discovered in 1610, and two centuries later it became the first celestial object of its kind to be photographed as a leading target in research for the formation of new stars; today.

#2: No high resolution images of exoplanets

Make no mistake, there are no images of nearby exoplanets. In general, they are artistic representations, as in the photo on the left.

Now we already have some direct observation images. On the right is the most famous example, the HR 8799 system.#AstroMiniBR pic.twitter.com/29isXeAVSg

– Ana Carolina Owner (@astroposses) January 26, 2023

To date, more than 5,000 planets known as exoplanets have been discovered outside the Solar System. While there are some direct images of these corpses, as in the photo on the right above, in general, most of the photos we find when surfing the Internet are computational artistic representations.

This is because direct images with good quality exoplanets are extremely difficult to obtain, and in the vast majority of cases this task is actually impossible. Small and dim, planets are easily lost in the glare of the stars they orbit. For comparison, the difficulty of the task would be equivalent to trying to observe a small fly flying near a lamp on a pole 100 kilometers away.

However, despite these enormous difficulties, the current technology found in some telescopes manages to achieve special conditions under which an exoplanet can be observed directly. In these cases, infrared imaging techniques are used, which make it possible to see such planets with a greater luminosity than can be obtained from visible light.

#3: What TV show might an alien civilization be watching?

If other civilizations are watching our electromagnetic wave propagation, what are they watching? ??

This image shows the range of TV program signals beamed into space relative to the Sun’s neighboring stars! #AstroMiniBR

(c) Incomprehensible Goose pic.twitter.com/4FTzg0jUhG

— Nicolas Oliveira (@nicooliveira_) January 27, 2023

Astronomers estimate that there are between 200 and 400 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. However, only a small fraction of that number makes up our stellar neighbor. The Solar System, whose sun is a single star, is a relatively isolated system compared to other stars in the galaxy, such as those found in globular clusters.

For example, there are only about 130 stars within a radius of 20 light years from the Sun. From this perspective, we might ask: How far in space did our electromagnetic signals travel? Considering that about 100 years ago, we started transmitting radio signals knowing that they travel at the speed of light in all directions through space, which means that the first signals traveled a maximum distance of 100 light-years from Earth!

Extending this idea, the image above draws a representation of how far certain TV program signals sent into space travel. For example, an eventual alien civilization on the star Sirius receiving our signals might find SpongeBob among their television shows!

#4: Dust-covered galaxies

out of many galaxy categories one of my favorites is hot-DOGs (hot Dust Concealed Galaxies) ??

They are extremely bright galaxies in the infrared, containing a high amount of dust, resulting from the merging of other galaxies (and without a defined shape).#AstroMiniBR + pic.twitter.com/AwIIwHLGQ0

— yanna martins franco (@martins_yanna) January 24, 2023

One of the best acronyms coined by astronomers is hot DOG galaxies. hot, dust-covered galaxies) are hot galaxies shrouded in dust.

Its central black hole is a rare type of quasar that emits large amounts of radiation, which heats the dust and gas that feeds it and emits large amounts of infrared light, 1,000 times faster than the Milky Way. This fact makes hot-DOG galaxies one of the brightest objects in the universe. However, the density of the surrounding dust is so great that much of this light is hidden.

#5: Beautiful NGC 1097

Could the galaxy NGC 1097 get any prettier? ??
these are images taken by the NACO/VLT and ERIS/VLT instruments, and in the photo on the left we can see more detail in the dust bridges as well as the galaxy’s inner ring.#AstroMiniBR
{c} ESO/ERIS team pic.twitter.com/pKTRT2ivN1

— yanna martins franco (@martins_yanna) 18 December 2022

The NASA/ESA Hubble Telescope captured spectacular images above the bright star-forming ring surrounding the heart of barred spiral galaxy NGC 1097.

In this image, the galaxy’s larger-scale structure is barely visible: its relatively dark spiral arms surrounding its core extend beyond the edges of the image. This spiral galaxy is located 45 million light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Fornax (The Furnace) and contains a supermassive black hole at its center that is 100 million times the mass of our Sun.