Sunday, August 14, 2011

Local Galactic Group Flag

Local Galactic Group Flag
or Rather the Hubble Bubble Group

This is the flag of our Local Galactic Group, commonly called the Local Group. Our group has three major galaxies in it, Triangulum, Andromeda and us - the Milky Way.

The central galaxy on the white disc is the Milky Way. It seems that our galaxy is the biggest of the three main players. The galaxy on the orange disc represents Andromeda our fraternal twin - so to speak. The green disc's galaxy represents Triangulum. The two smaller yellow galaxies represent smaller satellite galaxies and other puffs of stars that are on their own. The crossing over of the orange and green discs with the white Milky Way disc created a red and blue shift overlap, in honor of Ed Hubble's discovery of the red-blue Doppler shift in astronomy. His magnificent recognition of a red and blue shifts, gave us a basic picture of cosmic geography in the early 20th century.

An easy way to remember the meaning of colours is that Milk is white for Milky Way, Orange and Andromeda both have the hidden 'jzz' sound, and their is a hard G in Green and Trian-G-ulum.

Edwin Hubble
with his cosmic peace pipe

There are about 30 galaxies in our Local Group, within 10 light years.

You can thank a man from Missouri for coining our local hub of galaxies as the Local Group - Edwin Hubble. Mr. Hubble is more famous for a floating telescope in orbit named in his honor- the Hubble Telescope.

Although the name Local Group makes a lot of sense, it is self centered point of view. The name does not distinguish us form the trillions and trillions of other Local Groups. Perhaps an additional second name is needed?

I propose that our Local Group have a second more distinguishable name as the - "Hubble Bubble Band" in honor of Mr. Hubble.

Our Local Group or rather Hubble Bubble Band has about 30 galaxies rocking and rolling in our galactic neighborhood. Members of the Hubble Bubble Band can easily jam with each other within a 5 light year radius.







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