Astronomy is Moving: The Static Illusion

Astronomy suffers from the `Static Illusion' - because astronomical changes usually occur over intervals much longer than a human lifetime they appear static. This illusion affects our understanding of how astronomical objects work. Clusters of galaxies are not pools of hot gas glowing quietly, but sloshing pails of gas with new blobs being continually added; Quasar accretion disks are not gradually and quietly letting matter flow onto a black hole like sand through an hourglass, they are constantly bubbling up and throwing off gas (like boiling oatmeal, or pancakes). Many astronomical objects though vary strongly, implying dynamic, rapidly changing, structures within them.

The lack of change is often just an illusion caused by the poor angular resolution of current telescopes. With enough angular resolution there are some astronomical objects that let us see changes in their structure in real time. Observations at the 1/10th arcsecond level with HST and near-infrared adaptive optics on ground based telescopes are beginning to create movies of `astronomy in motion'.

These data let us see how dynamic the Universe really is, and helps us escape the trap of the Static Illusion.

Here is a collection of (short) movies showing real motions in real astronomical objects. No Simulations.

More contributions welcomed!

Stars orbiting Milky Way nuclear Black Hole Eckart, Genzel & Ott....

Supernova 1987a expansion Bob Kirshner and SINS team....

Supernova 1987a Rings HST....

Proto-star HH-30 expanding jet HST....

Young binary, XZ Tau, expanding `bubbles' HST....

Crab Nebula wisps: optical expansion HST....

Crab Nebula wisps: X-ray expansion Chandra....

Vela PSR Jet: X-ray structure changes Chandra....

`Superluminal' expansion in blazar jets Marscher and BU team with VLBA....

TX Cam `breathing' of star atmosphere Diamond and Kemball, VLBA (masers)....

Classical nova shell expanding: V705 Cas Tim O'Brien et al. MERLIN. alas, no movie :-(

Pinwheel Nebula around Wolf-Rayet 104 Peter Tuthill, John Monnier & WIlliam Danchi (1999 Nature 398, 487)

must get gifs for all these some day...