Whirlpool

"Upon one occasion, while engaged upon a seven-foot mirror, he did not remove his hands from it for 16 hours together." -from Caroline Herschel's obituary Welcome to another Messier Monday here on Starts With A Bang! Each Monday, we highlight a different one of the 110 deep-sky objects that Messier catalogued so that comet-hunters wouldn't confuse these permanent fixtures with transient comets. But each object has a unique, remarkable story in its own right. Image credit: The Messier Objects by Alistair Symon, from 2005-2009. Out of the 110 objects, a full forty of them are galaxies…
Last week, Jamie (my significant other) came home from work and told me about a conversation she had with her coworker, Chris. This week she asked another one, Miguel, whether he had any questions about Astronomy, Physics, space, etc. This week's question comes from Miguel: What is a galaxy, anyway? Why does it look like a big bright fuzzy star? And why are there different types of galaxies; shouldn't they all be the same? This might come as a surprise, but 100 years ago, it was pretty much accepted that we were the only galaxy in the Universe. In fact, there was a great debate in 1920 on…