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Largest Ever Digital Survey of the Milky Way Released 75

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the playing-nice-gets-you-places dept.
Several readers have written to tell us that an international team of over fifty astronomers from around the globe have created the largest ever digital survey of the Milky Way. IPHAS (INT/WFC Photometric H-alpha Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane) is an image survey designed to show large-scale structure within our galaxy. IPHAS data is being released by utilizing technology from the UK government funded open source project Astrogrid. Some of the images are quite spectacular.
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Largest Ever Digital Survey of the Milky Way Released More

Largest Ever Digital Survey of the Milky Way Released

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  • Lovely (Score:5, Informative)

    by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) * on Wednesday December 12, 2007 @05:36PM (#21676887) Homepage Journal

    ...and while the astronomers fiddle with gear you and I can only dream of having access to, take your camera and a tripod outside, and with no more than a portrait lens, you can take shots like these. [flickr.com]

    Click on the thumbnails for descriptions of the subject matter and the equipment and settings used.

    The night sky is beautiful at every scale.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • They're little glow-in-the-dark spots painted on the ceiling that are only visible when the big yellow light is turned off at night. Some are still visible when the little night light is turned on.

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by davester666 ( 731373 )
          Good thing it's just a digital survey. I don't think there's a glove big enough for a digital probe.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by beav007 ( 746004 )
            My question is: How do we know it's the biggest digital survey of the Milky Way ever? Are we to assume that the other intelligences in the universe progressed beyond digital before they surveyed it? Perhaps they surveyed it in analogue and decided that was enough?
      • Wait for it to get dark. Take out your camera. Now get in your car (or SUV, truck, motorcycle, tank, whatever -- I presume you have some sort of motorized land vehicle) and drive out past the city limits. Continue driving until you reach an area with very few buildings, no lights, etc. You know. They call this "the country" or "the rural area" or something like that. Park your car and get out. Now you should be able to see these "stars". Take pictures. Good luck!
    • beautiful, or should I use WOot

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) *

        Either is more dignified than the silly little dances I do around the tripod when I get a good shot. :-)

    • "This set is limited to photos taken with an unaided camera - no telescopes, though I do use 500mm and 600mm lenses sometimes which provide significant magnification."

      Unless you're taking a woman's portrait while she undresses in another apartment building, 600mm is no portrait lens ;)

      http://www.amazon.com/Canon-600mm-Super-Telephoto-Cameras/dp/B00009R6X9/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1197496457&sr=8-2 [amazon.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) *

        So far, I've only used 500mm and 600mm lenses on shots of the moon. All the shots of the stars posted so far were done with 50mm and 85mm lenses. The reason is simply practical; at 500 and 600mm, the lenses I am willing to buy tend to be about f/8, which means they don't gather a lot of light. Given that, the exposure time has to be very long, and that means unless you have a tracking mount, you're going to get a bunch of star trails, very faint, if you get anything at all. The portrait lenses I use are 50

        • Assuming you have a decent film body I would highly suggest using it.
          I shoot with a canon FTb and a Nikon F3 for my astronomy shots on 1600 speed film exposed at 6400. Then push process the film 2 stops. Vastly superior to any digital shots on a prosumer DSLR.
          -nB

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) *

            My current camera will go to ISO 3200, and I've got a sharp f/1.2 lens. That gives me a *lot* of room, lightwise. I suspect that as I learn, there's plenty of room for improvement before I reach any limitations of my gear. I'm clearly overexposing the shots by letting the camera decide when it has enough light; the thing is, up on a hill in the winter in Montana, fooling around isn't a great idea, unless you want to be found in the spring, gnawed on by critters. I am sure I'll learn more when the weather i

            • Naturally not:(

              The real issue with the current crop of cameras is the CMOS sensor. They are notorious for pixel and dark current noise.
              A good deep depleted CCD will have noise margins so low as to be non-issues.

              Naturally the advantage of your approach is near instant feedback, while in my case I take 5 or so shots of the same thing, bracketing exposure like mad.

              And FWIW, those cold nights are vastly better for photography of the stars than warm ones.
              -nB
        • I took some nice shots of the moon with a 200mm (x1.6) on my Digital Rebel XTi, but not as nice as yours. I haven't intentionally tried to take pictures of stars, but I got some in the background of 8"-13" city shots. I'm guessing I don't need a really long exposure to take star photos, and maybe if I make it to NH at Christmas I'll try some Milkyway shots. I guess I haven't thought about taking pictures of stars with a lens because I'm chomping at the bit to try my parents new 10" telescope -- computeri

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) *

            I'm guessing I don't need a really long exposure to take star photos,

            The big question: What ISO will your DR go to? At 1600 ISO, I can take a good star shot in 2 seconds at f1/8, basically a $70 lens. If I let the bright stars overexpose, say 6 seconds, then all kinds of faint detail comes out, like the nebulosity in Orion, even a little bit of the Pleides nebulosity, which is considerably fainter. As your ISO goes down, your time goes up, or your glass has to get faster. I have a freaky-good f/1.2 l

            • I think 1600, but the one time I used that setting it was very noisy and I couldn't adjust the photos. Of course, if the stars are properly exposed I wouldn't need to adjust it...

              I will play with the lens I have and hopefully the telescope and see how into it I am. I kinda want the telescope...

              Thanks for the links

    • Re:Lovely (Score:5, Informative)

      by syousef ( 465911 ) on Wednesday December 12, 2007 @08:19PM (#21678431) Journal
      ...and while the astronomers fiddle with gear you and I can only dream of having access to, take your camera and a tripod outside, and with no more than a portrait lens, you can take shots like these.

      Disclaimer: I have a masters in Astronomy but I've never worked in the field. I did the degree "for fun", because I never got the opportunity to study in highschool, and because I wanted to know how we know what we know about the universe. I'm very much an amateur in every respect.

      Defintely worth fiddling with camera gear, but at some point if you're taking your own shots you're going to want to use a telescope. Starting with binoculars is definitely the best way. Moving to a dobsonian for viewing (but terrible for photography) is a good next step. (Don't buy anything with a small aperture unless all you're interested in is moon and planets). Next good step would be a Newtonian on EQ mount or SCT. It gets very expensive very quickly. I pretty much gave up on astrophotography. (I live in a large city and when I do get away far enough, I'm usually exhausted from the drive, and there are other priorities (family). Also a 10" scope takes up a hell of a lot of room even in a station wagon).

      An alternative to the above is to get hold of sky survey data that's already available and captured by the pro images. There's a lot out there that gets released usually after a year (to give the professional scientists time to work with it). Hubble data, Chandra X-Ray data, SOHO images. It's not all pretty composite colour pictures - you often have to learn to manipulate the images with image software or with more complex data there's specialized software that's not always for the faint of heart (often free, often Linux based). "Amateurs" have done amazing things with some of the images and data. In astronomy there is an "image" (FITS) file format that is actually more than just a simple JPEG etc. You have a background in photography so while it's not strictly RAW data in the sense that it's not coming straight off a sensor, you can think of this format as containing more information the way RAW contains more than JPEG (stuff like calibration information). More information here.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FITS [wikipedia.org]
      http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/fits.html [nasa.gov]

      Please understand I'm not trying to discourage you from backyard astronomy. I just thought you might be interested in this too. These days the guys that take the images/capture data and the guys that analyse them are not always the same. ie. you often have technicians that specialise in running the machines.

      Here are some links for you:

      FITS data from lots of missions/instruments
      http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/archive.html [nasa.gov]

      Digitized Sky Survey
      http://archive.eso.org/dss/dss [eso.org]
      http://archive.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/dss_form [stsci.edu]

      Hubble
      http://hubblesite.org/ [hubblesite.org]

      SOHO
      http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]

      Chandra
      http://chandra.harvard.edu/ [harvard.edu]
      http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/ [harvard.edu]

      If you want more detail and are prepared to try to work out science speak, you can get access to draft papers on:
      http://arxiv.org/ [arxiv.org]
      Look under astrophysics

      I don't have time to go into any more. Hope you're interested.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) *

        at some point if you're taking your own shots you're going to want to use a telescope.

        I'm looking at a Celestron NexStar 8SE GoTo Schmidt Cassegrain, with a T-ring and a prime focus camera adapter. It's my first telescope, so I'm not inclined to go much larger until I have a little experience. In the mean time, my camera is already challenging me.

        In astronomy there is an "image" (FITS) file format

        I'm familiar with it. I wrote the FITS loader for our image processing software.

        Please und

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by syousef ( 465911 )
          No problem.

          By all accounts your NexStar should be an excellent scope for viewing. You should however be aware that there are limitations when it comes to long exposure astrophography on an alt-az mount, even with a field de-rotator. The Celestron C8-SGT 8" Go-To XLT shouldn't be much different in price, has goto, and is on an EQ mount. Bear in mind that I've not used either scope. I just know if I was going to want to do any photography I'd pick an EQ mount. It's your choice, of course.

          http://www.celestron. [celestron.com]
  • I'm sure the admins appreciate that.

  • Survey results (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Wednesday December 12, 2007 @05:41PM (#21676955)
    52% of stars surveyed said they were in favor of equality for dark matter
    41% were opposed
    7% had no opinion

    Margin of error 2.7%
    • But remember the rule about all digital surveys:

      This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
  • All I can say about that image is wow! Set it as my work PC desktop and have just been sitting at my desk starring at it for the past five minutes....incredible.
  • The guy on radio who promises to name a star after your request for $54 (includes name book) is advertising on the radio for Christmas again. Claims the name will be "coyrighted" because he submits the book to the copyright office. With only 200 million objects and 310 million people in the USA (and more int he rest of the world), this is not enough!
    • You better hurry up and order, then!
    • What? There are people outside of the USA? I thought there were only savages!

      What are you going to do when you find out the aliens that inhabit those stars have already named them?

      • What are you going to do when you find out the aliens that inhabit those stars have already named them?


        Well, if we can kick their asses, then we'll rename them whatever the hell we want.

        See "The Naming of Names" in Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles.

  • This should be the most accurate galactic census (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is the first time they've sent people door-to-door in the case of unanswered questionnaires.
  • I am always amazed at the large-scale structures of the universe. Especially the way that these structures are almost always analogous to physical phenomenon on earth (perhaps no surprise or coincidence if you adhere to the anthropic principle ;)

    I was showing my wife the computer-generated 3D maps of the uneven, filamentous distribution of galaxies in the known universe and she commented on how it reminded her of the fingers and tendrils of water being thrown from a bucket - but thrown out in all directions. I suddenly saw gravity as a sort of surface tension, trying to bring everything back together into a nice, neutral sphere. I also suddenly saw the dark energy as the momentum of the thrower and the dark energy as the buffeted air through which the splash disperses.

    It's amazing how an analogy can take something so intangiable and make it immediately accessable. I feel, however, that sometimes a simple analogy can have a negative effect as well.

    Without a true appreciation of the reality of astronomical images, comparisons to clouds and swirling water can diminish the wonder.

    For me, in this image I see a stunning display of incomprehensible size and volume. I see the very heart and soul of our universe laid bare; the very stuff from which everything is made - amazing!

    But for someone more lay in the ways of science and astronomy (and less enthused) this simply looks like a puff of smoke.

    How is it that some of us wonder and wander and some of us do not?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      > I suddenly saw gravity as a sort of surface tension,
      > trying to bring everything back together into a nice,
      > neutral sphere. I also suddenly saw the dark energy
      > as the momentum of the thrower and the dark energy
      > as the buffeted air through which the splash disperses.

      Were you both completely stoned at the time?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by TheLazySci-FiAuthor ( 1089561 )

        > I suddenly saw gravity as a sort of surface tension,
        > trying to bring everything back together into a nice,
        > neutral sphere. I also suddenly saw the dark energy
        > as the momentum of the thrower and the dark energy
        > as the buffeted air through which the splash disperses.

        Were you both completely stoned at the time?


        Not completely.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by syousef ( 465911 )
          Not completely.

          I respectfully submit that you're wrong. Perhaps the pot affected your assessment of your stone-briety :-)

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by morgan_greywolf ( 835522 )

      How is it that some of us wonder and wander and some of us do not?
      The average IQ in the United States is only in the high 90s [wikipedia.org]? (Note: I am an American, so, no I'm not eurotrolling)

    • this simply looks like a puff of smoke

      Some people see the human circulatory system as nothing more than pipes, etc. A sense of wonder comes with knowledge about a subject (I wouldn't stand in awe of Einstein if I didn't know how much he advanced science), and it also requires you to care about the subject. I'm willing to bet that everyone has something they're awed by, whether it's celestial phenomena, the human body, or Paris Hilton's ability to manipulate the press. Each of those things is amazing if you care to find it so.

      • That's a very good point. I can see how narrow my interests are when I look at things from that perspective. And I now in fact wonder how important a knowledge of the milky way really is. The old phrase, "in the grand scheme of things" leaps to mind as well as it's counterpart, "for the task at hand".

        At our current state as a civilization I wonder if it is more important to focus on the big picture, or if we really should be working a little harder at home before tackling the cosmos. After all, Paris Hilton

    • I am always amazed at the large-scale structures of the universe. Especially the way that these structures are almost always analogous to physical phenomenon on earth (perhaps no surprise or coincidence if you adhere to the anthropic principle ;)

      I agree, the images are fascinating, but it is important to remember that geometries and processes scale very differently. Geometries may scale in a fractal nature, but the processes driving the creation of said geometries may vary tremendously.

      Or not, of course. My whole point is that you can't equally scale geometry and process; they are independent.

    • You cannot have awe without wonder, you cannot have wonder without curiosity and a delight in asking. The best scientists are, in many ways, childlike in their need to ask and discover. The same is true of geeks, inventors and other such individuals that society routinely calls "mad", "eccentric", "crazy" or "abnormal". Which is why geniuses are also usually outcasts from the very societies that revere them.

      Is discovery possible without such qualities? I'd say no - you wouldn't think of asking enough ques

  • I also have it set on my screen at work as my background. It creates such a nice glow.

  • My God! (Score:3, Informative)

    by StefanJ ( 88986 ) on Wednesday December 12, 2007 @05:57PM (#21677173) Homepage Journal
    It's full of stars!

    Um, sorry. I just had to.

    Think they'll spot any dyson spheres?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jugalator ( 259273 )
      You're joking, but dyson spheres have actually crossed the mind of astronomers.
      None found yet however. :-)

      According to Wikipedia:

      Given the amount of energy available per square meter at a distance of 1 AU from the Sun, it is possible to calculate that most known substances would be re-radiating energy in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Thus, a Dyson Sphere, constructed by life forms not dissimilar to humans, who dwelled in proximity to a Sun like star, made with materials similar to those available to humans, would most likely cause an increase in the amount of infrared radiation in the star system's emitted spectrum. Hence, Dyson selected the title "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation" for his published paper.

      SETI has adopted these assumptions in their search, looking for such "infrared heavy" spectra from solar analogs. As of 2005 Fermilab has an ongoing survey for such spectra by analyzing data from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS).

      And from the SETI Institute:

      DATE: 1980
      OBSERVER(S): WITTEBORN
      SITE: NASA - U OF A, MT. LEMMON
      INSTR. SIZE (M): 1.5
      SEARCH FREQ.(MHz): 8.5 microns - 13.5 microns
      FREQUENCY RESOL.(Hz): 1 micron
      OBJECTS: 20 STARS
      FLUX LIMITS (W/m**2): N MAGNITUDE EXCESS < 1.7
      TOTAL HOURS: 50
      REFERENCE:
      COMMENTS: Search for IR excess due to Dyson spheres around solar
      type stars. Target stars were
      chosen beca

    • Dyson spheres are hard to see by definition. They're supposed to capture all the radiation of of a star, so not much to see. The outside would be a bit hotter than background, so possibly visible in the mid/far IR. But not in Halpha light, so not in IPHAS. Sorry.

  • The headline made me think of livejournal... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Glowing Fish ( 155236 ) on Wednesday December 12, 2007 @06:09PM (#21677317) Homepage
    And the "surveys" that some livejournal users clutter up their pages with.

    If the Milky Way had a livejournal, would it fill it up with digital surveys of such questions as

    "What shape are you? Spiral, elliptical, or irregular?"

    and

    "What is your spectrum?"
  • ...made me snicker.
  • http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~nwright/iphas/rosette_dustlanes.jpg [ucl.ac.uk]

    Thats a great eye catching image (1.8Mb) but the notes on the website are sketchy. Does anyone know more about what to look for? Is there any kind of annotated image labelling the key parts and giving more info on why they are important?
  • are there any 3 dimensional interactive maps of the local space in the galaxy? or applications?
  • one linked in the article? I've had a snoop around and I'm coming up with nothing. Right shame to because I love big pictures of space but I've never really found a good repository of large images (1024 x 768 just doesn't cut it when you have monitors capable of much higher resolutions).

  • More photos, and an easter egg (Score:4, Informative)

    by dotancohen ( 1015143 ) on Wednesday December 12, 2007 @10:51PM (#21679513) Homepage
    More photos here [ucl.ac.uk], including a Firefox easter egg [ucl.ac.uk].



    Bonus goatse easter egg [ucl.ac.uk]

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