Pondering The Bigger Picture

 winter night foraging through foreign aisles
i have captured  & caged butter & cheese
tired i return home from a successful hunt

Thanks to my friend Sandy for making me a little more curious what Nasa has on the internet.

Did you know the Nasa's Imagine The Universe site has an Ask an Astrophysist feature? From their site:

This is the "Ask an Astrophysicist" service of the Imagine the Universe! web site. We specialize in cosmic-ray, gamma-ray, and X-ray astrophysics, and other satellite based astronomical observations. Our research subjects are often exotic, like black holes, quasars and dark matter.

So when I heard a quick news story about the number of visible galaxies I was able to see the answer there on the Nasa's Imagine The Universe site:

Your inquiry is definitely in the minds of many scientists who are trying to obtain a good estimate for the number of galaxies in the universe. The methods used to achieve such number varies, and therefore, the results would vary, too. Also, as new and improved technology becomes available, astronomers can detect fainter objects that were not seen before. These objects that have come into view will in turn change the estimated number of galaxies.

For example, in 1999 the Hubble Space Telescope estimated that there were 125 billion galaxies in the universe, and recently with the new camera HST has observed 3,000 visible galaxies, which is twice as much as they observed before with the old camera. We're emphasizing "visible" because observations with radio telescopes, infrared cameras, x-ray cameras, etc. would detect other galaxies that are not detected by Hubble. As observations keep on going and astronomers explore more of our universe, the number of galaxies detected will increase. For more about the Hubble Space Telescope, check out this web site:

http://www.stsci.edu/hst/

Hope this helps,
Georgia & Veronica
For "Ask an Astrophysicist"

The CBS news story I only caught a fragment of said there was 361 galaxies that could support intelligent. Should I ask an astrophysicist how they would know that? Cause I sure don't know. But I do find it fascinating.

May we keep our sense of wonder