Interesting! While I am not looking for Alycia Weinberger, she has -in the past- worked with the woman I am looking for. Stellar disks are another research topic she is involved with.
No. I wrote whirl, not whirls.
Isn't it?

No.

No.
Right!

Hmmmmm...an IR Doppler of our galaxy?

__________________
Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

Sorry, no. As said above, the whirl is not a galaxy.

OK, one guess before bed. From the same link Arneb gave, how about Andrea Mia Ghez?

angels = UCLA
long end = Keck (near infra red)
whirl = SMBH at the center of the Milky Way

It was right on the table, only two occurances of LA there ...

Some years ago she said that LA is a very good place for IR astronomy.
IR, Keck is the sharpened eye.
Or the horde of stars whizzing around there.

Go on!

__________________
Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem.

I glanced at your link, Arneb, and assumed those were too old. I did get it partially, right, it actually is an IR of our galaxy: the central region. [The Plymouth Galaxy thing cost me, no doubt.] [I'm just kidding, Jedi, formulaterp got it right.]

__________________
Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

OK, my turn then. In the same style as my last question:

From left to right, identify the 4 bright objects in the attached picture.


http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/4406/stars2sh7.jpg

Hmmmm...star, star, star, and....star. I suppose names are not optional.

__________________
Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

LOL, yeah I was sorta looking for names, but they are definitely stars.

First things first. Let's get a scale.

The minor stars are very square/pixellated. Suggests taken with a DSLR? (Bad noise reduction)

The major stars are round, suggests that it wasn't taken through a telescope? (No diffraction peaks)

I would guess we are in the galactic plane from the dark nebula and star count.

__________________
Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

Don't know the particulars of the camera/equipment used, but it was a rather wide field image. I cropped and enlarged a portion of the image for the quiz.

And yes, it is in the galactic plane.

Feel free to ask questions. It's easier to answer them than come up with obscure puzzle-type references. (And no, that's not a clue)

Is it near M1 or M2?

How 'bout near M6, M7, and M8 (Scorpius to Sagitarius)?

__________________
Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

Well it's much closer to M6-M8 than either M1 or M2.

I guess the four stars cluster in the Quadricus constellation.

OK I don't know if there even is a Quadricus constellation.

But they are not clusters, they are stars. Well they could be multiple star systems (e.g. binaries), but most folk refer to them as stars. In fact they are not obscure stars by any means.

Are their magnitudes essentially the same today as in the image?

__________________
Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.