Gas Clouds As Giant Telescopes 116
allrong writes "Astronomers have found a way to harness clouds of gas in space to make a natural 'telescope' more powerful than any manmade telescope currently in operation. Read the press release or take a look at the images and description of the process."
You know (Score:4, Funny)
Figures (Score:4, Insightful)
Somehow I am not surprised.
Re:Figures (Score:2)
Especially after a night out at a mexican restaurant drinking Corona, and at 3 AM the cats explode in all directions off the bed and your SO goes to sleep, with the cats, in the living room on the loveseat.
She didn't appreciate my giggles, either. I was informed the next morning that at my age, it was undignified to giggle about something as simple as a fart joke. Heh.
SB
Re:You know (Score:1)
Get over it, /. jokes, I think we all appreciate how cool this is but the write-up said gas clouds, I m
Ok, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ok, but... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ok, but... (Score:4, Informative)
It looks like they are going to extrapolate the original signals by measuring the same image while moving in different directions (thanks to earth's orbit). (I guess the assumption is that the glass clouds are immobile in shape and position).
Doesn't seem to be a heretic claim.
Re:Ok, but... (Score:1)
Don't call it a telescope. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Don't call it a telescope. (Score:1)
"We don't need new telescopes! Just look through a cloud!"
OMG (Score:2)
gas (Score:4, Funny)
by SirHalcyon (267061) on Tuesday April 08, @09:42PM (#5689925)
(http://www.uberfoo.net/)
Finally a worth cause to donate the result of all the bean burritos I eat.
Don't call it a telescope. (Score:5, Interesting)
by The Terrorists (619137) on Tuesday April 08, @09:43PM (#5689928)
Extracting data from these requires as many monitoring facilities and personnel as a real telescope.
ROFLMAO
SB
Practicality? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's still a cool idea, however.
Re:Practicality? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hence, it is not useful for the contribution to existing research but discovering new phenomenons in the universe.
Re:Practicality? (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't looking to make nice Kodak pictures to hang up on walls. They are measuring x-rays and radio waves from very far away. And they seem to be extrapolating the values by using the velocity of the earth. The gas clouds don't need to be focused... the focus is done by taking many many 'blurry' images, and constructing a non blurry one. It seems the point is to actually catch signals that are otherwise too faint... rather than 'zoom' in more on things that are too small.
(That's what I understood at least).
Re:Practicality? (Score:1)
No, the point is to zoom in on small things. Black holes are fairly bright (as long as they're being fed) but tiny. You may be thinking of using gravitational lensing by foreground clusters of galaxies to detect very distant galaxies behind them.
Re:Practicality? (Score:2)
There are indications either way of what's going on...
On one hand, you have the seemingly clear statement: With the new technique researchers will be able to resolve details about 10 microarcconds across [...]
On the other hand you have these two:
The gas cloud acts like a lens, focusing the radio waves from the quasar, making them appear stronger. [...](from the caption on the first picture)
We'll be able to see to within a third of a light-year of the base of one o
Re:Practicality? (Score:2, Funny)
When you want to see something, pull my finger.
Re:Practicality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Um... what don't you want to look at?
Re:Practicality? (Score:1)
Sorry.... that was another fart joke.... I'll just go now....
Re:Practicality? (Score:4, Informative)
The big idea is that you can deduce extra information from what you see when a blob of gas passes in front of the object you're observing. Basically, the gas fudges the image in much the same way as the Earth's atmosphere does (called seeing) but on a longer timescale. The lack of atmosphere, as you all know, is why the Hubble is such a good telescope. If you know how the object you're observing was creamed, then possibly you can reconstruct the original from what you've observed. Extra information has to come from somewhere, and that means you're going to be observing for a long time to get some statistics together.
I know it works for solar observations, since I've written code that does it myself. I can't find a good before and after example right now, but it's pretty impressive. I guess this will work. Neat.
Alfred
Re:Practicality? (Score:2)
Re:Lens Analogy (Score:1)
My impression is that it *does* act like a lens, based on references to similar optical techniques. Just an imperfect lens.
But even with the imperfections, one can glean useful information from this. It is sort of like observing something at the bottom of a pool of water. Even though no single view gives you a non-distorted image, if you mentally average out the distortions, you
Re:Lens Analogy (Score:1)
Re:Lens Analogy (Score:1)
Men In Black (Score:3, Funny)
uh... (Score:1)
Re:uh... (Score:3, Informative)
Read the article. The effect is caused by scattering and descattering energy, it doesn't have anything to do with gravity.
Re:uh... (Score:4, Insightful)
If these things keep improving...holy moley....now, for the first time in history, processing power is one of the strongest points in observations, rather than telescope resolution, light gathering power, or spectrum bandwidth.
We need to get better scopes in orbit. Combine that with computer processing and... Wow.
The future is so bright....I need lead shielding
I haven't been that active in watching advances in astronomy for the last couple years, but what we're doing nowadays with 20 year old tech (HST (admittedly somewhat upgraded) and more modern ground telescopes is astounding. We've learned more in the last 10 years than we learned in the previous 200. Astounding. Astonishing. I wish I could have beat graduate level calculus, so I could be doing this for a career.
Wow.
SB
Re:uh... (Score:1)
Re:So? (Score:3, Informative)
How far? (Score:1)
Re:How far? (Score:1)
I do, I do! Astronomical phenomena.
Two words (Score:1)
Fucking amazing !!!
NASA Surrenders (Score:5, Funny)
It´s a radiotelescope (Score:5, Informative)
Its an effect that amplifies the radio emissions of a quasar or any other source of these which pass through the gas clouds so they can be more easily read here on earth.
BTW, you could RTFA which is very short, I promise.
images of the process (Score:5, Funny)
Re:images of the process (Score:1)
Re:images of the process (Score:1)
not only does this post deserve to be modded as funny, but as insightfull as well
what the hell were they thinking with those huge pictures?
even the normal ones were quite easy to make out on my 19" @ 1600x1200
i was expecting to see some sample images or something...
Re:images of the process (Score:1)
Seriously though, the bigger images are much better to print with. (Not that I can see many people printing this stuff out)
Re:images of the process (Score:2)
Radiotelescope/repeater (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So what you're saying is... (Score:1, Funny)
It's free karma and loads of fun.
Sounds like a Star Trek TNG episode (Score:5, Funny)
Picard: "Geordi, do we still have the power left to do this?"
Geordi: "I suppose it's possible.....I'll need to divert power from the shields and possibly redirect the conduits to decks 10 through 20, but yes, it can be done"
*10 seconds of silence pass while the rest of the officers shoot uneasy glances towards one another*
Picard: "Make it so. Number one, join me in the ready room...."
Yet Another.... (Score:2, Informative)
Hmm. A little off-topic?
Actually, that the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organisation) is financially supported mainly (I believe) by the (Australian) federal government to find/discover/create/invent things that benefit Australia. Does this happen in other countries? Quite often I get the impression, especially with the good ol' US of A, that most discoveries/invention
Re:Yet Another.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yet Another.... (Score:1)
Canada has NRC, Britain has PPARC and some other things, Germany has the Max Planck Institutes, France has CNRS, and Japan has the Ministry of Sports (and Education. I think they might have rearranged things, but they should still have some food physicists take
Re:Yet Another.... (Score:1)
Re:Mirror of a images (Score:1)
The high-res images are meant for the print media. Don't forget that they are copyrighted.
Sugar cube on the moon from here?! (Score:1)
On a side note... A sugar cube on the moon... That's wild! Perhaps now we can read the warning label on the Sun, as those skin cancer commercials suggest.
Gas (Score:5, Funny)
ban (Score:3, Interesting)
Doesnt it mean (Score:4, Interesting)
For instance how do you calculate the thickness of the gas cloud between the earth and this quasar its supposedly magnifying in on? As the thickness of the clous would affect the radio waves of the quasar more than a thinner gas cloud. Whats the yardstick to measure the gas cloud?
Re:Doesnt it mean (Score:2)
Re:Doesnt it mean (Score:2, Funny)
THIS IS NOT A NEW TECHNIQUE! (Score:5, Interesting)
In microscopy, the limiting resolution is the scattering of light due to small air or water currents (depending on what your speciman is submersed in)--the effects are similar to twinkling stars caused by Earth's atmosphere. Sometimes you can evacuate the sample chamber and remove the effect, but this isn't practical for biological or aqeous specimans.
Therefore, a technique called "reverse diffraction engineering" is used to remove the scattering effects. Powerful software is needed to analyze the subtle image changes over time. The software then digitally removes the scattered light and creates an image with a much higher resolution.
A similar technique is being used to effectively remove the atmosphere above earth based telescopes, creating a "vacuum column" above them. I don't have a link, but this technique was demonstrated last year at a European observatory. A full blown telescope is in the works. This technique could render the Hubbel telescope, and the need to put telescopes in space, obsolete.
Re:THIS IS NOT A NEW TECHNIQUE! (Score:2)
Re:THIS IS NOT A NEW TECHNIQUE! (Score:2, Insightful)
This IS different than just removing twinkling stars.
This is similar (using your biological example) to using cell membranes to magnify DNA.
Cant anyone read anymore?
Re:THIS IS NOT A NEW TECHNIQUE! (Score:5, Informative)
Except what you are talking about is a different phenomenon: these people are using the gas clouds to actually amplify the signals they receive, not to decrease image noise. They *are* extrapolating in a similar way that you describe, but it's not because the earth's view is shrouded by a haze surrounding it...
There is a sublte nuance there... A similar thing in microscopy would be to actually induce the air currents you speak of, and through a software analysis of the resulting image, obtain images that were bigger/brighter/whatever than if it were taken in absolute vaccum.
feh. (Score:2)
maybe x10 will release a portable 10-ton spyspacegastelescope cam.
What gas clouds!? (Score:1)
What gas clouds?
Re:What gas clouds!? (Score:3, Informative)
The science curriculum in a lot of schools doesn't seem to have changed much since the 19th century. (Interstellar gas was discovered in 1904.) These [utk.edu] pages [uiuc.edu] will [unh.edu] get [surrey.ac.uk] you [nasa.gov] current [astronomynotes.com].
Re:What gas clouds!? (Score:2)
However, the illustrations on the explanatory page [csiro.au] are wildly out of scale and show the gas clouds sitting nearly atop the earth. It gave me the impression of vast expanses of "ether-bubbles" floating above us, and was also a bit puzzled.
Lightning bolts (Score:1)
Good idea (Score:1)
New NASA diet (Score:3, Funny)
The practical usefullness of this? (Score:2)
We have the one test object, and we can refine it through this, but that would imply that we can only see a set number of objects. If the actual Gas pocket is too far away, would it still be as practical.
I guess it wou
Re:The practical usefullness of this? (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't download the images! (Score:1)
Applicability to General Astronomy? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, this news is absolutely fabulous. Nobody has been asking though about how applicable this might be in general astronomy, for example how much of the sky could be covered with this technique, and whether anything like this effect could be created with manmade gaseous clouds.
At the very least, does anyone have a link to the original scientific draft? I am curious about how extensive these clouds are, and whether we can just "dial in" any part of the sky which is covered by such a cloud for a significant portion of the year. In particular would this be something that could be used to get images of extrasolar planets? Who cares what wavelength, the new European lunar probe is going to use X-rays to see what elements are available, maybe we can do the same with these clouds? Only problem is the targets will obviously be more than 50 light years away in this case.
Re:Applicability to General Astronomy? (Score:2, Informative)
What's that smell? (Score:2, Funny)
Natural Telescopes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Natural Telescopes (Score:2)
What you saw is what is often labeled as a mirage. In a particularly clear atmosphere and certain conditions, light can be bent enough to see objects out of your direct line of sight. Sometimes they can even be magnified. The phenonmenon is common in deserts, less common around the ocean.
There are some people who think this is a myth, but I've seen them myself, in Arizona on particularly clear days (especially during days when the morning wind has scoured the sky clean, then subsided).
SB
How the technique actually works (Score:1)
Remember the old saying that you can tell the difference between a star and planet because the stars twinkle but planets do not? This is because the angular size of the turbulent fluctuations in Earth's atmosphere responsible for twinkling are comparable to the angular diameter of a planet. So the planet looks as if it's "resolved" and its twin
Re:How the technique actually works (Score:1)
Of course, I think it's one of the only times a paper's or topic's author has posted to the topic. I knew there was a reason I wade through the comments.
Too bad the attention span of readers here (and volume of the s
Re:Shockingly Bad Idea (Score:1)