Spitzer's 5-Gigapixel Milky Way 124
James Harold writes "Today NASA unveiled a new infrared mosaic of our galaxy. The result of over 800,000 individual images collected by the Spitzer Space Telescope, it is the largest, highest-resolution, and most sensitive infrared picture ever taken of the Milky Way (and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future). Because Spitzer sees in infrared, it penetrates much farther into the galaxy, revealing previously hidden star clusters, star-forming regions, shocked gases, glowing 'bubbles' and more. The complete mosaic is about 400,000 by 13,000 pixels, and a 180' printed version is being shown at the American Astronomical Society meeting in St. Louis. A zoomable, annotated version of two different variants on the image (as well as some additional information on the science) is available at Alien Earths, a NASA- and NSF-supported education site." The Spitzer survey is already causing a stir potentially bigger than that raised when Pluto was deemed not a planet: two minor spiral arms of the Milky Way may be demoted.
Re:Compression at it's finest (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Compression at it's finest (Score:5, Informative)
You can download 3000*2400 versions of each mosaic, or download each individual tile (16 in total) at insane resolution. Enjoy.
Link to AliensEarths, mentioned in article (Score:5, Informative)
Link (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Compression at it's finest (Score:1, Informative)
Anyway, it's here: http://www.alienearths.org/glimpse/ [alienearths.org]
Direct link to the huge images (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Compression at it's finest (Score:4, Informative)
Re:And the winning viewer is... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bigger than Pluto? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.eso.org/projects/vlti/instru/prima/images/image13.jpg [eso.org]
Re:And the winning viewer is... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Compression at it's finest (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.alienearths.org/glimpse/ [alienearths.org]
The viewer is pretty slick
Re:Accessibility (Score:5, Informative)
But every mission and every observation has a PI and a team of researchers that have proposed that project, have done a huge amount of homework on why they chose the targets they did, what they hope to observe, and how they will do analysis. The PI's of the project are thereby given exclusive access to their data for a period of time. IIRC, for Hubble it's one year.
This period of exclusivity is to allow them to get the credit for their hard work in choosing the observation, and to prevent being scooped by fellow academics. It's like a very short-lived patent of sorts.
IMHO, a period of one year for astro data is a perfectly valid way to satisfy all parties involved. It also puts pressure on the researchers to get their asses in gear and publish, before someone can get at their data. But it lets everybody else use the data for their own purposes after the expiry date.
Of course there is the question of the data storage and retrieval service, and all the calibrations that need to be done on the raw data, and the effective HOWTO procedures for such calibration. Much of this is available, and for active projects there are help desks. Eg, for each of the sensors on the HST there is a specific help desk to provide assistance explaining how to get and process the data. But for older missions, there are no funds to provide these services. But the data should be there, somewhere. But you're probably on your own to calibrate it properly (or at least find older users of said data that can help you).
Re:And the winning viewer is... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Accessibility (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Compression at it's finest (Score:1, Informative)
There's also another version of the survey in Google Maps at http://mipsgal.ipac.caltech.edu/mips_map.html
Lots of work! (Score:1, Informative)
I'm one of the lucky admins who had the responsibility of posting these GLIMPSE Milky Way images. This was the single largest release Spitzer has had to date.
For those people that are having problems downloading the images, keep in mind some of them are HUGE.
If all you wan is a casual look click on the "Screen-Resolution (900x492): JPEG".
If you want to see the entire poster there are four links in the orange box in different resolutions:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2008-11/ssc2008-11a.shtml
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2008-11/ssc2008-11b.shtml
Lastly if you want print a poster for your self, go here and download the 36"x48" poster:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/features/downloads.shtml
The best way to see the entire image is to use one of the zoomables, it does not require huge amounts of bandwidth, plus you can still take screen caps of something interesting.
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2008-11/moreinfo.shtml
One of the zooms was made by us here at spitzer the other is a more detailed version put out buy the GLIMPSE team.
Hope everyone enjoy's these images plus many many others that are already posted on the spitzer site.
Happy Spitzer Employee