I work out of our office on One Market Street in San Francisco. My standup-desk is right across from our Gallery at One Market. One of our newer exhibits is called Powers of Design. It was first featured at the Technology Entertainment & Design (TED) conference last year. Powers of Design depicts the size of everything from the inconceivably small to the mind-blowingly large. I thought I'd cover the exhibit elements, one at a time, over a few months. I started small and am working my way up.
The M15 Globular Cluster as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera. Image courtesy of NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).
1018 MAGNITUDE
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 m
100 Light-years
M15 Globular Cluster
175 Light-years
Messier 15, a.k.a. M15, is a globular cluster in the constellation Pegasus, and while that winged horse of Greek mythology may be old, it’s got nothing on M15’s 13.2 billion years. 175 light-years in diameter and 33,600 light-years from Earth, M15 has a total luminosity of 360,000 times that of the sun, which is rather bright itself, and approaches naked-eye visibility under good conditions.
Home to over 100,000 stars, M15 is one of the most densely packed globular clusters in the Milky Way. Having undergone a core contraction known as “core collapse,” M15’s enormous number of stars may very well be surrounding a central black hole.
M15 was discovered by Jean-Dominique Maraldi in 1746. Man oh man that was one big cluster find. The M in M15 is not for Maraldi but Messier as in Charles Messier's catalog of comet-like objects published in 1764. I guess sometimes it's good to be a publisher instead of a discoverer.
Thanks to Global Content Manager, Matt Tierney, for the images and text that comprise the exhibit element. This is just one of the many exhibits in the gallery at One Market in San Francisco. The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us.
Previous posts on this topic include:
- 10-15 Protons and Neutrons
- 10-14 Atomic Nucleus of a Uranium Atom
- 10-13 Nada, Zilch, Zero, Zip
- 10-12 Gamma Rays
- 10-11 Fluorine Ion
- 10-10 Wavelength of Hard X-Rays
- 10-9 Carbon Nanotubes
- 10-8 Molecular Transport Nano Robot
- 10-7 HIV Virus
- 10-6 Red Blood Cells
- 10-5 Sand
- 10-4 Microelectromechanical Systems
- 10-3 Sonata Silicium Watch Components
- 10-2 Lego
- 10-1 Prosthetic Fairing
- 100 Biome Concept Car
- 101 Ma'erkang Housing Reconstruction
- 102 Shanghai Tower
- 103 Bay Bridge
- 104 Masdar City
- 105 Palm Islands
- 106 The Moon
- 107 Earth
- 108 Jupiter
- 109 The Sun
- 1010 Distance Light Travels in 34 Seconds
- 1011 Distance from Jupiter to the Sun
- 1012 Distance from Pluto to the Sun
- 1013 Voyager 2
- 1014 The Solar System
- 1015 Cat's Eye Nebula
- 1016 Pillars of Creation
- 1017 Great Orion Nebula
Future blog posts will cover:
- 1019 Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy
- 1020 Triangulum Galaxy
- 1021 The Milky Way
- 1022 IC 1101
- 1023 Local Group of Galaxies
- 1024 The Local Supercluster
- 1025 3C 273
- 1026 Outer Limit of the Universe
Measurement is alive in the lab.