Animated galaxies?

[akktri]

I am curious about how fast a galaxy spins.  I see lots of static images, but I assume they rotate and change over time.  How fast does this occur?  Every second?  Every minute?  Every ten days?  Every century?
You think one day this site will show an animation of galaxies as they produce stars and twirl or expand or whatever?

[Alice]

Welcome to the zoo

The Milky Way Galaxy takes a little under 200 million years to spin round. It's pretty big, several hundred light years across, so it needs time!

[NGC3314]

Welcome to the zoo

The Milky Way Galaxy takes a little under 200 million years to spin round. It's pretty big, several hundred light years across, so it needs time!

More like 100,000 light-years. (Doesn't anyone remember Monty Python songs any more?) Sadly, I can't use that video snippet in class reviews, both because of the especially nihilistic context and the distinctly unsuitable wireframe animation in the film. One year I did get carried away and sang it to a class during review for the final exam; I gather those were expressions of shocked horror.

It is remarkable that radio astronomers can measure the Sun's orbit around the galactic center directly, as we see the radio source at the galactic center appear to move ever so slightly against the reference frame of distant object. Also, there are a couple of other galaxies for which similar techniques can measure their internal motions in a geometrical way (independent of Doppler shifts). M33 and NGC 4258 come to mind.

[akktri]

That pretty much destroys my idea of them being like cosmic whirlpools!
 
Ahoy!  Watch out for the maelstrom!  It only takes a million years to pull us in!

[stargatetraveler]

first you would have to be immortal, get a movie camera with a lot of film and place it where you want in space - then set it on record and come back a few billion years later, rewind the film and watch it on very fast forward. the movie every scientist would kill for..... but here's one for ya.

[stargatetraveler]

I am just not understanding how to enter the ra. and dec. coordinates on the DR7 page that you are linked to. . . . I love to classify galaxys at the zoo and sometimes I just paruse around zooming in and out at the DR7 site, no problem. . . .  BUT if I find something I want to check off a website say for example 3C321 and I get the ra. and dec. coordinates from various sites and they are in hours,minutes and seconds  (3C321. ... Coordinates (J2000), RA 15h 31m 42.70s | Dec  +24° 04' 25.00")
WELL the DR7 site has a box your suppose to type in the ra. and dec.  but it seems to want a decimal type coordinate , I guess, My question is how do you convert hours,min,seconds or how do I type it in ? attached is the box in question. thank you all

[AlexandredOr]

I am just not understanding how to enter the ra. and dec. coordinates on the DR7 page that you are linked to. . . . I love to classify galaxys at the zoo and sometimes I just paruse around zooming in and out at the DR7 site, no problem. . . .  BUT if I find something I want to check off a website say for example 3C321 and I get the ra. and dec. coordinates from various sites and they are in hours,minutes and seconds  (3C321. ... Coordinates (J2000), RA 15h 31m 42.70s | Dec  +24° 04' 25.00")
WELL the DR7 site has a box your suppose to type in the ra. and dec.  but it seems to want a decimal type coordinate , I guess, My question is how do you convert hours,min,seconds or how do I type it in ? attached is the box in question. thank you all

Hi ! To convert  h  mn  s  into  °  '  "  you need a pocket calculator and you can easily do it if you remember that 24 h = 360°... ---> 1 h = 15° and so on..

[Geoff]

You could also go to the Glossary and look under "Conversion..."

Here's the link: http://www.galaxyzooforum.org/index.php?topic=272749.msg198913#msg198913

[stargatetraveler]

hey good idea ! I never new, I'm going to have to start reading more here at this site. I should read the entire glossary here at the zoo . . . . . and at the link to the glossary it even directed me to the swift website that has a converter, yahoo ! but I still want to try to be able to convert ra. and dec. with a calculator..... well thank you very much.

[NGC3314]

One other thing - in the "Search by" options from the SDSS explorer pages, you can either enter decimal degrees or the more traditional sexagesimal notation, with pieces separated by colons. So something like 12:26:18.323 and -02:18:26.2 would work for that.

[stargatetraveler]

thank you again, another byte of knowhow I will add to my data core - I guess we're way off topic of "animated galaxys" But on a similar note > I was wondering if anyone knows if there are any galaxy simulators out there for people to possibly create and watch galaxys do there thing speeded up to what ever parameters you set ect. that are downloadable and possibly free. I'm sure there's million dollar software out there for graphic arts like making a movie or episode of star trek, But just something for demonstration puroses and a few controls. . . . Yes, I've seen the zoo's merger project and Yahoo for me it the next best thing - I'll tell ya.  . . . . That is one of  the coolist sites on the net for me at present - I spent over an hour on my first target galaxy, colliding galaxys over and over to almost tune in to the target galaxy.