Milky Way Over Pyramid Of The Feathered Serpent : To See The Feathered Serpent Descend The Mayan Pyramid

Milky Way over Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent : To see the feathered serpent descend the Mayan pyramid requires exquisite timing. You must visit El Castillo – in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula – near an equinox. Then, during the late afternoon if the sky is clear, the pyramid’s own shadows create triangles that merge into the famous illusion of the slithering viper. Also known as the Temple of Kukulkan, the impressive step-pyramid stands 30 meters tall and 55 meters wide at the base. Built up as a series of square terraces by the pre-Columbian civilization between the 9th and 12th century, the structure can be used as a calendar and is noted for astronomical alignments. To see the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy descend overhead the Mayan pyramid, however, requires less exquisite timing. Even the ancient Mayans might have been impressed, though, to know that the exact positions of the Milky Way, Saturn (left) and Jupiter (right) in the featured image give it a time stamp more specific than equinox – in fact 2019 April 7 at 5 am. via NASA

More Posts from Dangerous-space and Others

dangerous-space

4 years ago

This is the Tarantula Nebula! 🕷🕸🕷🕸🕷🕸

This star forming region is so big that it is 160,000 light years across! At it’s center, there are a bunch of stars totalling 450,000 solar masses that produce the Tarantula Nebula’s high luminosity and will likely become a vibrant globular cluster. ✨✨✨

Taken by me (Michelle Park) using the Slooh Chile One telescope on November 16th, 2020 at 5:27 UTC.

271 notes View Post

dangerous-space

5 years ago

NGC 253: The Silver Coin Galaxy via NASA https://ift.tt/2yYJ2NM

NGC 253 is one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, but also one of the dustiest. Dubbed the Silver Coin for its appearance in smalltelescopes, it is more formally known as the Sculptor Galaxy for its location within the boundaries of the southern constellation Sculptor. Discovered in 1783 by mathematician and astronomer Caroline Herschel, the dusty island universe lies a mere 10 million light-years away. About 70 thousand light-years across, NGC 253, pictured, is the largest member of the Sculptor Group of Galaxies, the nearest to our own Local Group of galaxies. In addition to its spiral dust lanes, tendrils of dust seem to be rising from a galactic disk laced with young star clusters and star forming regions in this sharp color image. The high dust content accompanies frantic star formation, earning NGC 253 the designation of a starburst galaxy. NGC 253 is also known to be a strong source of high-energy x-rays and gamma rays, likely due to massive black holes near the galaxy’s center. Take a trip through extragalactic space in this short video flyby of NGC 253.

(Published April 14, 2020)

78 notes View Post

dangerous-space

5 years ago