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9 - The “Paradox of Youth”: Young Stars in the Galactic Center

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2013

Robert H. Sanders
Affiliation:
Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, The Netherlands
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Summary

The View from Groningen, 1983

In the late spring of 1983 the more observant residents of Groningen might have noticed groups of unusual dreamy-looking people wandering their streets and squares muttering among themselves about spirals, gas, stars, and bars (but not the usual sort which are in abundant supply in the town). They might have even heard the occasional mention of a black hole, although they probably would have thought that the visitors were discussing the large and unpleasant underground public toilet on the Grote Markt (the central market square).

Most Groningers do not realize (or much care) that their town is the birthplace of the modern study of the structure the Galaxy – that this is where, 100 years earlier, Jacobus Kapteyn began his measurements of the images of tens of thousands of stars on photographic plates and devised his model of the Milky Way – the Kapteyn Universe - which placed the Sun near the center of the great star system. It is the university town where Jan Oort defended his thesis in 1926 before moving on to the more cosmopolitan center of Leiden. And now Oort was back in town, along with about 200 other astronomers for an international symposium at the Kapteyn Institute appropriately entitled The Milky Way Galaxy.

This meeting attracted the most prominent astronomers who were working or had worked on various aspects of galactic structure and dynamics. Included among these were Donald Lynden-Bell, Martin Rees, Jerry Ostriker, and Martin Schmidt. There were even several eminent historians of science, Owen Gingerich, for example, who discussed various developments related to the discovery of the Milky Way as a spiral galaxy.

Type
Chapter
Information
Revealing the Heart of the Galaxy
The Milky Way and its Black Hole
, pp. 115 - 128
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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