Dr. Alan Stern preparing for a high-altitude test flight in NASA's two-seat WB-57 aircraft.
Photo Credit: Southwest Research Institute.

Some of you may know, I recently launched a new “Ask” feature over at Universe Today.

The inaugural launch features Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator for the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. I collected questions from UT readers in the initial post and passed them along to Dr. Stern who graciously took the time to answer them.

You can check out Dr Stern’s responses to the reader questions at: http://www.universetoday.com/92028/dr-alan-stern-answers-your-questions/

Thanks to everyone who helped make this kick-off a success. Stay tuned next month for the next installment with Expedition 29 Commander, Mike Fossum.

The BRAVA fields are shown in this image montage.
Image Credit: D. Talent, K. Don, P. Marenfeld & NOAO/AURA/NSF and the BRAVA Project

Nearly 80 years ago, astronomers determined that our home, the Milky Way Galaxy, is a large spiral galaxy. Despite being stuck inside and not being able to see what the entire the structure looks like — as we can with the Pinwheel Galaxy, or our nearest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy — researchers have suspected our galaxy is actually a “barred” spiral galaxy.

Barred spiral galaxies feature an elongated stellar structure , or bar, in the middle which in our case is hidden by dust and gas. There are many galaxies in the Universe that are barred spirals, and yet, there are numerous galaxies which do not feature a central bar.

How do these central bars form, and why are they only present in some, but not all spiral galaxies?

Check out the full article at: Universe Today