Went for my evening walk re-listening to an astronomy lecture on galaxies and dark matter. There are different types of galaxies: Elliptical, Spiral, and irregular galaxies with odd shapes that don’t fall into the other two types. Dark matter makes up 90% of the mass in galaxies. No one really understands dark matter and what it consists of, but there are a few ideas floating around. First inferred by Fritz Zwicky of Cal Tech in 1933 when he was observing a galaxy cluster and compared their calculated mass with their motion about each other and found there was four hundred times more mass than should be. Zwicky also came up with the idea of neutron stars. I would like to read more about him!
Read more of the Richard Feynman book until it was time to do my exercises. Did my stretches, lifted weights, and went for my nightly run. When I got back I took out my telescope to do a little star gazing. The night was clear but the atmosphere was a little unstable. Jupiter was bright in the sky and I watched it and its moons for a while. Two of its moons were very close to the planet and on opposite sides. I could barely make out the two bands of the planet tonight. Then I just did a sweep of Sagittarius looking at a few globular clusters and the rich star fields near the Tea Cup.
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