2013 Update

Each year, I accumulate the key Hubble and other observatory discoveries that impact on our “How far away is it” story. We have some new information on a number of our segments from the Solar System to the Cosmos.

There was big news on Voyager. I will be updating the Heliosphere segment as well as covering the news in this update.

For the Milky Way, we have news from Proxima Centauri to a distant light echo variable star. We have a star that looked older than the Univers; a bipolar planetary nebula; one of the oldest globular clusters known; and a sneezing star birth nebula. We also have news on our galaxy’s outer halo.

Outside the galaxy, we’ll see the Magellanic Stream, which stretches nearly halfway around the Milky Way; the magnificent spiral galaxy M106 in the Virgo Supercluster; Supernovas in galaxy NGC 6984; and colliding galaxy NGC 922.
In the Cosmos we have two supermassive galaxy clusters; a very bright quasar; and a type 1a supernova over 10 billion light years away.

We’ll conclude with a look at Gaia, a brand new satellite orbiting the L2 Lagrange point. It will map over a billion stars and give us the best look yet at our home galaxy.