And let there be fire works! aka Phoenix Galaxy

Huge news about the great beyond

The Phoenix galaxy cluster that is breaking several important astronomical records. This composite image includes an x-ray image from Chandra (purple), an optical image from the 4m Blanco telescope (red, green and blue), and an ultraviolet image from GALEX (blue). Photograph: Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center/NASA/CXC/MIT/M McDonald

The Phoenix galaxy cluster revelation

ok here we go:

 Yesterday, August 15, 2012, it was discovered by the scientific community that the Phoenix Galaxy is producing stars at a rate that has never been measured before. The speed of the creation of STARS in this galaxy is almost impossible to comprehend. The Phoenix is producing an average of two STARS per day, our time. There are 3 trillion stars at the center of one main galaxy as compared to our paltry 200 billion that make up our galaxy, the Milky Way.

We have 1 star, the sun, and our 8 planets, (or 9: I am still counting Pluto as a contender. I don't think it's fair to remove planet status based on size. "It's not the size that counts it's how it revolves." and I am nostalgic for my science fair project that ends with the grey little ball.) revolve around this one star. This is our solar system.

Then we go up to our galaxy, The Milky Way, comprised of 200 billions stars.

there are classes of stars but many are "suns" of their own systems. This could get super involved so I will stop. I just want to give a perspective of scale.

Then up it one more to The Galaxy Cluster, this is the group of all the galaxies in that area of space together. Think of a big city, surrounding towns and respective suburbs as a galaxy and then there is another city close by, etc. Like a road trip across country. Then you reach the ocean. That is space.

Aspirin or tin foil hat time: 

This is from the Christian Science Monitor: 2.5 quadrillion: How many times more massive the Phoenix cluster is than our own sun. This may be an all-time record for galaxy clusters — the most massive structures in the universe, composed of hundreds or thousands of individual galaxies bound together by gravity — researchers said.

This is from the guardian:A massive galaxy cluster, one of the largest structures in the universe, has been discovered about 5.7bn light years from Earth according to US researchers."Stars are forming in the Phoenix cluster at the highest rate ever observed for the middle of a galaxy cluster," the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics said in its press release. 

Well  before my own head explodes:

Meow for now,

Catraven =^..^=