The Milky Way: Dark Constellations, A Black Hole & Our Galaxy

The Milky Way is an iconic feature of the night sky. In this episode, we’ll help you spot the center of the galaxy and well-known nebulae in the Milky Way. And we’ll explain how galactic archaeologists like Dreia Carrillo figure out what the Milky Way is actually made of.
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Huge thank you to Chabot Space & Science Center for all of their help with this video. Check them out here: https://chabotspace.org/

The Milky Way is perhaps one of the most striking features in the night sky. Especially if you’re someplace really dark, during the right season… and even better if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere. And long before humans knew what they were looking at was actually our home galaxy, they used their imagination to comprehend this bright band stretching across the sky.

While we may typically be drawn to the bright lights in the Milky Way, in the past, some cultures paid more attention to the darkness. And it turns out that focusing on the dark in the Milky Way is a pretty good place to start to figure out what our galaxy is made of.

Among those who embraced the dark, dusty lanes of the Milky Way rather than the bright spots were Aboriginal Australians. They saw the Milky Way as a river in the sky with black water holes filled with fish or evil spirits. The areas they identified are known as dark constellations. One of the most well-known dark constellation is the “Emu in the Sky.” Its body is outlined by the bulge in the constellations Scorpius and Sagittarius. Its head is formed by a massive dark nebula closer to the Southern Cross known as the Coalsack.

#blackholes #miklyway #constellations #astronomy #astrology #science #seeker

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A Comparison of Dark Constellations of the Milky Way
“The striking appearance of our galaxy in the night sky captivated them and imagined images became part of their cosmologies. This is examined with an emphasis on cultures of the Southern Hemisphere that embraced dark constellations-those made up of the dark dust lanes in the Milky Way rather than the bright stars. Perhaps the best-known examples are those of Aboriginal Australians and the Incas in the Andes, but others exist across the world. We present a brief introduction to cultural perceptions of dark constellations in the Milky Way, and a comparative look at common cultural themes and inspirations.”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333700963_A_Comparison_of_Dark_Constellations_of_the_Milky_Way

The Milky Way stellar halo - Andreia Carrillo
“The hierarchical model of galaxy formation predicts the streams and tails of disrupted satellites that we see in observations and simulations. These are signatures of small galaxies being eaten by a bigger galaxy (ours truly) but these only show the current interactions of these systems. For the galaxies that have been fully disrupted and incorporated in the Milky Way though, we are still able to separate them out using chemistry and kinematics!”
http://andreiacarrillo.com/research/

Solar System Exploration: The Milky Way
“Like early explorers mapping the continents of our globe, astronomers are busy charting the spiral structure of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Using infrared images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists have discovered that the Milky Way's elegant spiral structure is dominated by just two arms wrapping off the ends of a central bar of stars. Previously, our galaxy was thought to possess four major arms.”
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/285/the-milky-way-galaxy/
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You can probably point to the Big Dipper, Orion's Belt, and your astrological sign in the stars.
But what would the constellations look like from another solar system? And will any of Orion’s stars ever become black holes? In Seeker Constellations, we'll explain the science of the universe’s most famous stars and dive into the culturally significant stories behind them. Most importantly, we’ll provide a guide to where you can see these incredible constellations for yourself!
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