This is a subject I think I could win a medal for boring Britain to tears!

Did you know that our home known as ‘The Milky Way’ is on an unstoppable collision course with ‘The Andromeda Spiral’ galaxy? Well yer do now!

This galaxy is known as M31 & NGC224. It is the largest of the nearby galaxies, visible to the unaided eye as a faint oval patch of light. It is an intermediate spiral, orientated at an angle of 15° from the edge-on position and has a bright elliptical-shaped nucleus. Its distance is currently estimated as 725 kiloparsecs aka 2.36 million light years. It has a total luminosity roughly double that of our own galaxy. It is the largest of the established members of the LOCAL GROUP.

If you want to have some idea of size, take your old cornflakes packet and cut-out two circles. ( Other breakfast cereals are available! ) Draw round a regular cd/dvd disc and cut. Draw round a smaller 3″ cd single disc and cut. Now place them on a level surface with the edges 1.4 metres apart. The larger one is Andromeda and the smaller one is the Milky Way.  We don’t seem so important now, do we?

When it comes to ‘parsecs’ and ‘kiloparsecs’ I’m afaid I’m lost. But I can handle ‘light years’. Light travels in straight lines at the rate of 186000 miles per second. The formula of 186000 x 60 will give you distance per minute. This gives a figure of 11160000. Multiply this by 60 again to miles an hour, the figure is 669600000. Now multiply by 24 to give the distance for a day, the figure is  16070400000. Finally multiply this by 365 to give distance for the year, the figure now jumps to 5865696000000 miles. To get the distance to the Andromeda Spiral multiply this by 2.36 million! As yet, we don’t have the ability to just ‘pop-over’ for a cuppa. D’yer think Dr. Who would lend me his TARDIS?

Talking of light traveling in straight lines. When light passes close to an object like our planet, the magnetic field bends the rays causing the phenomena known as Aurora Borealis in the north and Aurora Australis in the south. When the Moon slips into the Earth’s shadow, some of the light bent by the Earth causes it to take on a reddish/orange hue. The same bending of light gives us the impression that the sky is blue. Are you one of those people that dosen’t realise that the sky reaches all the way down to the ground? A 1970’s song suggests that you ‘reach up and touch the sky’, all you have to do is just hold out your hand! Easy, init?

One thing to remember about looking into the sky at any time is the fact that nothing is where it appears to be. The light from the Moon takes a second-and-a-half. From the Sun its eight-and-a-half minutes. Another thing to remember when looking up into the sky: DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN, NOT WITH THE NAKED EYE AND CERTAINLY NOT WITH ANY FORM EYE-GLASS. Failure to follow this serious warning WILL cost you your sight!

I’m sure you’re all familar with the ‘Orion’ constellation. Its mostly a square of four stars with a belt of three in the middle. The star in the bottom right corner is Rigel. It is a blueish white supergiant and estimated to be 237 parsecs aka 773 light years away. Some say that the distance could be anywhere between 900 and 1400 light years. If the 773 figure is correct, then that would make it 40000 times more luminous than our Sun! Rigel’s diameter is believed to be equal to 70 times larger than the Sun. Opposite in the top left corner is Betelgeuse. It is a red supergiant and the second brightest of Orion. Its about 1500 light years away and is regarded as being unstable. If it has become a supernova we will have to wait awhile to realise that. If one was to transplant it into our solar system where the sun currently sits, Jupiter would be touching it. All the planets inbetween would have to be shoved aside!  If your eyes follow the line suggested by those three stars in the middle, you will find a binary star called Sirius. We see them edge-on, which means that we see the smaller one in front of the larger one, then side by side, then just the larger one, then side by side again. ‘Twinkle Twinkle little star, how I wonder where you are……’ The answer is 8.8/8.9 light years away, flashing like a good’un!

I’ve heard on the radio that the earthquake near Chile during 2010 has caused parts of the country to move approx 10 feet west of its original position. It is also claimed that the Falkland Islands moved a few inches west!

During 2011, there were a couple of earthquakes near Scotland. Has the earth moved for you?

To be continued………..