StarStuff
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About Me
Hi, I'm Stuart Gary, I'm a journalist and broadcaster with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. I love science, especially the majesty and wonder of space, so I put together a weekly astronomy show for the ABC called StarStuff.
In my spare time I like to fly planes, practice karate and pistol target shooting and play around with my cars, a twin Turbocharged Falcon GT Interceptor and a DeTomaso Pantera GTS.
I’m vegan, a life member of the RSPCA and a supporter of several animal welfare organisations.
My other great passion is music which is understandable when you realise that I was a radio music jock long before I became a journalist. My record library contains tens of thousands of singles, albums, videos, CD’s and DVDs. These days that’s all stored in an 8 terabyte raid enclosure linked to a desk top PC at home. My tastes range from rock and grunge through to trance and new romantics. At the moment I’m listening to heaps of MGMT, William Control, Hawthorne Heights and Short Shack, but I have lots of time for the classics like Placebo and the early stuff from Silverchair, In fact Neon Ballroom is still my favourite album, and Emotion Sickness is still one of my two favourite songs (the other being William Control’s Death Club).
StarStuff is a great name for the show, but it works on more levels than just astronomy, it’s really cool for any science program because everything in the universe after the quark gluon plasma of the big bang is star stuff even the iron which makes your blood red was manufactured in the supernova explosions of stars. Carl Sagan said it best, we are all star stuff.
This blog is designed to allow me to publish all the things which can’t fit into StarStuff. There’s heaps of really interesting stuff out there and only a half hour window for the show, so each week becomes a battle to try and squeeze it all in. This blog lets me do that.
You can check out the show at the offical ABC StarStuff website:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/starstuff/
There's also an official ABC StarStuff Twitter feed: @abcstarstuff
And an official ABC Science website: http://www.abc.net.au/science/
The legal stuff: This is my personal blog. The views expressed in this blog are those of me only and not the Australian Broadcasting Corporation or its management. I do not claim ownership of any of the media in this blog. where possible credit and or source will always be given. If one of your photos or other media is submitted in this blog and you would like it removed please let me know.
Blogs I follow:
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Sombrero Galaxy Not So Flat After All
New observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope reveal the Sombrero galaxy is not simply a regular flat disk galaxy of stars as previously believed, but a more round elliptical galaxy with a flat disk tucked inside. Spitzer’s infrared vision allowed astronomers to sample the entire population of the galaxy’s stars, as seen in this view in which starlight appears blue-green. The elliptical galaxy is so large that is spills beyond the edges of Spitzer’s view.
Within the elliptical is a flat disk galaxy. The disk itself shows hints of an inner, bright disk separated by a slight gap from an outer ring. The disk galaxy falls well within the bounds of the outer elliptical.
In previous images taken by visible telescopes, the galaxy’s flat disk is the most prominent feature. The overall appearance resembles a wide-brimmed hat, or sombrero, hence the galaxy’s name. Visible-light views missed the elliptical, or more round, nature of the galaxy, because the old stars dominating the elliptical structure are very dim when viewed at visible-light wavelengths. These same stars stood out when viewed in infrared light by Spitzer, allowing astronomers to re-classify the galaxy as an elliptical with a disk inside.
Infrared light of 3.5 and 4.6 microns is color-coded blue-green in this view.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
