"Polaris Ab" or Infinite Crisis Event?
 

Geoff Johns may not know the difference between a galaxy and a hole in his head, but the Hubble space telescope has detected something in the Polaris stellar system (which is NOT a galaxy, Geoff!):

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed something just as constant as the North Star: a hidden companion.

Polaris (as the bright star and navigational aid is formally called) now has two known stellar companions.

The first, Polaris B, has been known since 1780 and can easily be seen with even a smaller telescope; the second, Polaris Ab, had long eluded direct detection given its proximity to Polaris and its relative faintness.

Polaris is a super-giant more than two thousand times brighter than our sun, while its newly photographed second companion is a dwarf star just 2 billion miles from it, astronomers said.

They presented the results Monday at the 207th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

"With Hubble, we've pulled Polaris's companion out of the shadows and into the spotlight," said Howard Bond, of the Space Telescope Science Institute.

We should count our blessings that Hubble has been given a second (or third, depending...) life with a proposed maintenance mission, next year. The intrepid VW Bug-sized peeper has done more for cosmology in the last decade than the previous ten thousand years of stargazing.

Here's an older but still exceptionally cool link (linked via BBSpot, today, which reminded me):

Hubble Ultra Deep Field

When you arrive you'll find a 60+ meg jpeg, so boo-hoo if you're on AOL dial-up.

scientific facts
 

Thanks for posting this, Thom. It's good to know the universe doesn't depend on comics for its facts.

Here's a question, though: is the Polaris star system anywhere near the center of our galaxy, at least?

Could we fanwank InC into making sense if we squint?

Shawn H.
:icon_mist

No, the distance from our sun to the center of the galaxy is about 26,000 to 28,000 light years--but the distance to Polaris is about 430 light years (give or take 100 light years--they have trouble determining the distance to Polaris due to its luminosity).

I'm not sure that Polaris is even located between us and the center of the galaxy--but even if it is, it would still be more than 25,500 light years from Polaris to the center of the galaxy.

And remember--all of those distances are within the same galaxy. The distance to our nearest galactic neighbors is measured in hundreds of thousands of light years.

I just read the Adam Strange mini, which is apparently a prequel of sorts to InC, and it's the Polaris system in that, so something's changed.

Perhaps Wanda's reality-altering powers are more far-reaching than we thought...

Yeah, it's been the Polaris system ever since the silver age Hawkman stories of the 60s. It's Geoff Johns who started calling it the Polaris "galaxy"--and I'm 99.9% sure that he just doesn't know what a galaxy is.

He's also set Oa and the Guardians at the "center of the universe"--which is where he also believes the "Polaris Galaxy" is located (including the silvery-white crisis singularity).

From their position at the "center of the universe" on Oa, the guardians send forth their Green Lanterns to police the universe--with one GL responsible for a sector that stretches off to infinity (and which could potentially contain an infinite number of galaxies). :icon_craz

Someone better pump up those GLs with something stronger than caffeine cuz there's no time for sleeping when you have to cover infinity. :icon_mist

And, of course, Rann was originally in the Alpha Centauri system (which is why Adam Strange could only catch a zeta beam in Earth's southern hemisphere--where Alpha Centauri is visible). As the "North Star," Polaris is obviously visible only in the northern hemisphere.

What this means is that the planet Rann really traveled far to go from one system to the other. Of course, Johns believes it went even farther to another galaxy.

white holes in logic
 

Not to mention escaping from the gravity well that exists at the center of a galaxy, much less the originating big bang focal point of the universe.

:icon_sad:

Yes, the massive black holes that exist at the center of spiral galaxies--such as our own--would be a "blackest night" in which "Green Lantern's light" might have some trouble.