Apod 4.7

This picture looks so amazing. When I imagine space I think of it as an ocean. A vast ocean that contains everything in the world. Coincidently it also has some of the same properties in it. For example there is no gravity in space or water, you cannot breathe in space, However there are some differences too. For example space you cannot move you will just fall, and space is very cold, and space contains billions of different objects. This picture for one is the whirlpool Galaxy. It follows he handle of the big dipper. It is one of the Messier objects, to be exact the 51st one. This galaxy is interesting, for example it has spiral arms and a magellenic cloud coming out from it. A cool thing about galaxies is that in the center there has to be something with enough gravity to forces everything into it. The only thing that has that much gravity is a black hole. That is why this picture looks like a tidal wave because the black hole is condeseing all this material into a certain spot. The spiral arms are just side effects created by the gravity. There is also what is called tidal debris, it is that white looking stuff coming out of the cloud and the arms. This debris helps stars form and makes a galaxy a galaxy.