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| | APOD: 2003 September 25 - Logarithmic Spirals Isabel and M51 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-04) |
 | | For starters, Isabel was hundreds of miles across, while M51 (the Whirlpool Galaxy) spans about 50,000 light-years making them vastly dissimilar in scale, not to mention the extremely different physical interactions which control their formation and evolution. |
 | | But they do look amazingly alike, both exhibiting the shape of a simple and beautiful mathematical curve known as a logarithmic spiral, a spiral whose separation grows in a geometric way with increasing distance from the center. |
 | | Logarithmic spirals also describe, for example, the arrangement of sunflower seeds, the shapes of nautilus shells, and... |
| antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov /apod/ap030925.html (202 words) |
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