Wednesday, 18 May 2016

The Pinwheel Galaxy































M101 also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, is a giant spiral disk, made up of stars, dust and gas located 23 million light years away from Earth, in the constellation of Ursa Major. The galaxy is 170,000 light years across in diameter, has a mass of around 110 billion solar masses with a black hole around 30 solar masses sitting at its centre .The galaxy holds giant molecular hydrogen clouds, which pull together under their own gravitational force, which in turn creates stars. The Pin wheel is home to over 1 trillion stars, with roughly 100 billion of these stars being very similar to our own Sun.

The photo above is the most detailed image of a spiral galaxy that Hubble has ever captured. The image is composed of 51 individual Hubble exposures. The shape of the galaxy is formed due to gravitational forces and stellar winds. The blue areas in the image are regions where new stars have formed, whilst the bright centre of M101 holds very old stars.

Sunday, 15 May 2016

Veil nebula supernova remnant.

























The image above shows the Veil nebulae supernova remnant, took from NASA's Hubble Telescope. The image is composed of 6 separate images, each image covers a distance of 2 light years. When all 6 images are put together it reveals this stunning view from the remains of a massive star, that exploded over 8,000 years ago. That star had a mass 20 times larger than that of our own sun. Different gases are contained within the remnant and are shown in different colours to create the image. The red/ orange colours tell us that Hydrogen is present, the green colours tell us that Sulphur is present and the blue colours tells us that Oxygen is present.

Sunday, 8 May 2016

Teotihuacan - The city of the Gods.

Pyramid of the Moon





















Pyramid of the Sun to the left, Avenue of the Dead to the right.


























The temple of Quetzalcoatl








The image's above show the ruins of Teotihuacan, located 30 miles away from mexico city  Some theorists believe that it was the greatest city of its time.

The city was designed and built with long avenues and huge pyramids. The most central avenue in the city was named the street of the dead. The two largest pyramids where built of stone and named after celestial objects. One pyramid being named the pyramid of the Sun, the other was named the pyramid of the Moon.
The city was made up of 3 major pyramids with 200 smaller pyramids scattered across the city. Construction of the city started around the 1st century A.D. In 450 A.D almost 150,00 people lived there. The city stretches out nearly 20 miles, making it one of the ancient worlds largest cities.

After centuries of dominance the city suddenly collapsed, Its inhabitants left us with no documents or scripts to let us know what happened. The only things left behind where the monuments, artefacts and a few graves

The original people of the land we call the Teotihuacons, would be constantly repairing and re plastering the walls of the pyramids with lime plaster. Lime plaster is made by firstly burning limestone into a powder and mixing it with water. During the process of making lime plaster the limestone had to be heated to extreme temperatures in a stove by burning wood. A lot of wood would have been used to keep many stoves cooking the lime concoction at a steady heat, at around 800 degrees for 8 hours. Luckily for the Teotihuacanos the city was surrounded by dense forests, so finding wood to heat up the stoves was no problem. That was until they started using it all up. It's estimated that 30,000 tons of wood each year was used to maintain the plaster and pyramids within the city. That is roughly 3,000 acres of forest a year being destroyed over centuries. The forest would eventually never recover from this destruction, backfiring on the Teotihuacons significantly depleting their farm productivity dramatically. Theorists believe that Teotihuacan got so big and demanding that it simply couldn't maintain itself, causing the people of the land to migrate elsewhere, leaving Teotihuacan abandoned. Other theories suggest that Teotihuacan was burnt down after some sort of uprising or revolution occurred amongst the people within the city.

Some people confuse the Teotihuacons with the Aztec's who lived hundred of miles away from Teotihuacan. Some archaeologist believe that the Aztec's may have descended from the Teotihuacons. It was the Aztec's who discovered the site, 700 years after it was abandoned, and brought it into their culture. The Aztec's where blown away with the site, stating that, it was at this site where the Gods created the Universe, thus naming the site Teotihuacan, meaning "birthplace of the Gods".