PBH submitted a link to a really amazing composite image of the Milky Way released by NASA. They combined infrared, visible, and x-ray images taken by Spitzer, Hubble, and Chandra to create one beautiful image to commemorate the 400 years since 1609, when Galileo looked up.
The sun is being occulted, the reflection of the rings are seen on the dark side of Saturn. Not to mention the little faint blue dot just below the thickest part of the outer bulry ring, on the left side is supposedly Earth.
Well yeah, probably because just to the upper right of the center of the image, you can see what is clearly either the Death Star or Unicron heading right for us!
The Keck I telescope quietly pouts. "We're pretty great," it says. "We're a great observatory."
"I know, I know," says the Keck II consolingly. "It's just a name; don't let it get you down. We'd beat them in a second if we weren't too big to put in orbit."
"Are you saying I'm fat?" Keck I cries.
"Come on, that's a good thing for a telescope, am I right?" the Keck says encouragingly. "We're the fattest!"
"Yeah!" Keck I says brightly, spirits seemingly lifted. But as Keck II returns to observations, Keck I still feels the sting of not being in the spotlight.
Later, scientists analyzing data from Keck I find minor anomalies, caused by unexplained water droplets on the primary.
does anyone know where can I download huge versions of these kind of images? I always wanted to make a poster, I thought of getting a big enough one to make it 300 or 600 dpi at a large size (at least 1 meter width), and have it printed.
I might just be being blind or stupid and missed it, but what is the scale of the picture?
I want to get some idea of how big the things shown in it are.
There's an annotated image here [hubblesite.org], which inexplicably has a scale in light years/parsecs. I mean, it must be talking about at a particular depth, maybe the dust cloud the Hubble imaged? The arc-minutes/seconds scale, at least, makes perfect sense.
"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space...
The image covers about 1/2 of 1 degree of the sky, or about the same size as the full moon. Given the 0.5 degrees of arc, the distance to galactic center (about 30,000 light years), I leave it as a simple math (trig) exercise to work out the extent of the photo in light years across.
Nah, no I don't. If we take the length of the triangle as 30,000 and the angle as 2 * 0.25 degrees ( to split it into two right triangles), then sin(0.25 deg) * 30,000 = 130.9 light years, times two, gives about a 262 light year wide image, which means each pixel at 1920x1200 covers a square of about 0.136 light years (1,286,631,860,000 kilometers) per side.
For comparison, that's about 8600 AU (Earth-Sun distance). The solar system to the Heliosheath (where the Voyager probes are) is about 100 AU. So each pixel is a square, 86 solar systems across.
Anyone know where the area of the supermassive black hole at the center of the milky way is supposed to be located in this photo? Anyone with a version of this pointing out various popularly known astronomical bodies in the field? Some perspective would be cool to see on this starmap.
[...] to commemorate the 400 years since 1609, when Galileo looked up.
Galileo was born in 1564 [wikipedia.org]. I'm pretty sure that in 45 years he had at least one chance to look up...
Anyway, pretty picture. Now, in a few years when pollution and terrestrial lights has hidden the details of the night sky even in the remote, uninhabited regions, our grandchildren will say:
Grandad, did the sky really look so beautiful back then?
by Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday November 11, @09:47PM (#30068812)
I browse/. today to find only 80 comments on something as significant as this photo yet find 600 comments on something as insignificant as xbox users being disconnected.
A never-before-seen view of the turbulent heart of our Milky Way galaxy is being unveiled by NASA on Nov. 10. This event will commemorate the 400 years since Galileo first turned his telescope to the heavens in 1609.
The summary kind of missed the point of that sentence a bit...
It's amazing how something so obvious in retrospect was such an intuitive leap forward in (ahem) the dark.
Telescopes existed for some time before Galileo, but in extremely limited quantities and mainly used for practical purposes, such as scanning for mast and sails of ships as they emerged in the horizon.
In those days, the church told you how the heavens went, and that was that. After plenty of leeway for intellectuals during the Middle Ages, a panicky Vatican was in full-tilt political damage control mod
I'm pretty sure the whole segmented spinal column concept wasn't invented until the late 16th century. Ever see portraits from that time period and earlier? They didn't just figuratively have sticks up their asses.
It was the first thing I noticed when I zoomed in. Well, after I noticed how much smog there is in the milky way. There should be an intergalactic summit on that - nobody should have to live with all that dust.
Seriously cool ... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Seriously cool ... (Score:5, Informative)
Same here.
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/3903/milkywaycentercomp.jpg [imageshack.us]
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Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA08329.jpg [nasa.gov]
The sun is being occulted, the reflection of the rings are seen on the dark side of Saturn. Not to mention the little faint blue dot just below the thickest part of the outer bulry ring, on the left side is supposedly Earth.
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http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/missiondetails.cfm?mission=Cassini [nasa.gov]
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I also saw this launch in person. It was pretty sweet night launch.
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I looked hard, but I still can't find the black hole....
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A printed map? Don't they know that this is already obsolete? [space.com]
Can't we get this electronically on a Tom Tom, so we can find our way home?
this is beautiful (Score:2, Insightful)
and yet, somehow darkly disturbing.
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and yet, somehow darkly disturbing.
Well yeah, probably because just to the upper right of the center of the image, you can see what is clearly either the Death Star or Unicron heading right for us!
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O,o
What has been seen...
larger versions of image available here (Score:5, Informative)
You can download much larger versions of this image from the following link:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/28/image/b/warn/ [hubblesite.org]
I'm downloading the 50 MB TIFF at the moment.
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But just wondering, where's the black hole?
There's suppose to be a great big black hole there somewhere. I'm not seeing it
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Wow, what resolution is your desktop to use that as the wallpaper?
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Maybe he wants to print it poster-sized. At 300 dpi, the largest image would be 32"x16"
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http://www.mininova.org/tor/3140994 [mininova.org]
That's odd . . . (Score:2)
. . . there's no sign at all of Wisdom Chits.
(I wonder how many people will get that reference without having to Google.)
Missing something (Score:2)
Where's the Great Barrier?
Meanwhile, on a mountain top in Hawaii... (Score:5, Funny)
The Keck I telescope quietly pouts. "We're pretty great," it says. "We're a great observatory."
"I know, I know," says the Keck II consolingly. "It's just a name; don't let it get you down. We'd beat them in a second if we weren't too big to put in orbit."
"Are you saying I'm fat?" Keck I cries.
"Come on, that's a good thing for a telescope, am I right?" the Keck says encouragingly. "We're the fattest!"
"Yeah!" Keck I says brightly, spirits seemingly lifted. But as Keck II returns to observations, Keck I still feels the sting of not being in the spotlight.
Later, scientists analyzing data from Keck I find minor anomalies, caused by unexplained water droplets on the primary.
Reply to This
BIG SIZE (Score:2)
does anyone know where can I download huge versions of these kind of images? I always wanted to make a poster, I thought of getting a big enough one to make it 300 or 600 dpi at a large size (at least 1 meter width), and have it printed.
Re: (Score:2)
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Posted already, but in case you missed it: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/28/image/b/warn/ [hubblesite.org]
How big? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:How big? (Score:5, Funny)
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Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
1 cm = 1 megafuckload kilometers = 0.621371192 megafuckload miles
Fixed that for you ;) Remember, this is an American site with American readers whom might not be familiar with the metric system ;)
Re:How big? (Score:5, Informative)
Depends on how far away they are.
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Parent
Re: (Score:2)
There's an annotated image here [hubblesite.org], which inexplicably has a scale in light years/parsecs. I mean, it must be talking about at a particular depth, maybe the dust cloud the Hubble imaged? The arc-minutes/seconds scale, at least, makes perfect sense.
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Where's the black hole in this picture?
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The Universe is flat, fool!
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Re:How big? (Score:5, Informative)
Nah, no I don't. If we take the length of the triangle as 30,000 and the angle as 2 * 0.25 degrees ( to split it into two right triangles), then sin(0.25 deg) * 30,000 = 130.9 light years, times two, gives about a 262 light year wide image, which means each pixel at 1920x1200 covers a square of about 0.136 light years (1,286,631,860,000 kilometers) per side.
For comparison, that's about 8600 AU (Earth-Sun distance). The solar system to the Heliosheath (where the Voyager probes are) is about 100 AU. So each pixel is a square, 86 solar systems across.
Now that's a big pixel...
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Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Pfft. From TV I know we should be able to enhance the image enough so that we can see individual aliens by enhancing that pixel enough.
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The entire picture appears about 45 arcminutes across. So if the full Moon drifted in front of this picture, it would cover all but the outer edges.
You are here. (Score:2)
Anyone know where the area of the supermassive black hole at the center of the milky way is supposed to be located in this photo? Anyone with a version of this pointing out various popularly known astronomical bodies in the field? Some perspective would be cool to see on this starmap.
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Huh? (Score:2)
[...] to commemorate the 400 years since 1609, when Galileo looked up.
Galileo was born in 1564 [wikipedia.org]. I'm pretty sure that in 45 years he had at least one chance to look up...
Anyway, pretty picture. Now, in a few years when pollution and terrestrial lights has hidden the details of the night sky even in the remote, uninhabited regions, our grandchildren will say:
Grandad, did the sky really look so beautiful back then?
And we will bring out a wide, warm smile and say:
Not even remotely!
Intergalactic mug shot? (Score:2)
Sweet...
Re: (Score:2)
If so, it's already happened... we just don't know it yet. ;)
I see a rainbow planet!! (Score:2)
Quick! Sell the location to the Melnorme before our Ur-Quan overlords detect our shields aren't working!!
It doesn't look like a raspberry! (Score:2)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5191040/Astronomers-find-Milky-Way-could-taste-of-raspberries.html [telegraph.co.uk]
Obligatory (Score:2)
How despressing... (Score:3, Insightful)
I browse /. today to find only 80 comments on something as significant as this photo yet find 600 comments on something as insignificant as xbox users being disconnected.
I weep for the future.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A never-before-seen view of the turbulent heart of our Milky Way galaxy is being unveiled by NASA on Nov. 10. This event will commemorate the 400 years since Galileo first turned his telescope to the heavens in 1609.
The summary kind of missed the point of that sentence a bit...
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Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's amazing how something so obvious in retrospect was such an intuitive leap forward in (ahem) the dark.
Telescopes existed for some time before Galileo, but in extremely limited quantities and mainly used for practical purposes, such as scanning for mast and sails of ships as they emerged in the horizon.
In those days, the church told you how the heavens went, and that was that. After plenty of leeway for intellectuals during the Middle Ages, a panicky Vatican was in full-tilt political damage control mod
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It was the first thing I noticed when I zoomed in. Well, after I noticed how much smog there is in the milky way. There should be an intergalactic summit on that - nobody should have to live with all that dust.
Re:Anyone else see the skeletal hand? (Score:4, Funny)
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Parent