Hubble Takes Amazing New Images of Andromeda, Pillars of Creation 97
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in April, 1990. In 1995, it presented us with one of its most iconic images: a close-up of gas pillars in the Eagle Nebula, dubbed the "Pillars of Creation." Now, as HST approaches its 25th anniversary, astronomers have re-shot the pillars at a much higher resolution. Here are direct images links: visible light, comparison with old image, near-infrared light. "The infrared view transforms the pillars into eerie, wispy silhouettes seen against a background of myriad stars. That's because the infrared light penetrates much of the gas and dust, except for the densest regions of the pillars. Newborn stars can be seen hidden away inside the pillars."
That's not the only new image from Hubble today: NASA has also released the most high definition view of the Andromeda Galaxy that we've ever seen. Here's a web-friendly image, but that doesn't really do it justice. The full image is 69,536 px by 22,230 px. To see Andromeda in all its glory, visit the ESA's dedicated, zoomable site that contains all the image data. At the highest zoom levels, you can make out a mind-blowing number of individual stars. Andromeda is over 2 million light-years distant.
That's not the only new image from Hubble today: NASA has also released the most high definition view of the Andromeda Galaxy that we've ever seen. Here's a web-friendly image, but that doesn't really do it justice. The full image is 69,536 px by 22,230 px. To see Andromeda in all its glory, visit the ESA's dedicated, zoomable site that contains all the image data. At the highest zoom levels, you can make out a mind-blowing number of individual stars. Andromeda is over 2 million light-years distant.
Re:Just a simple question... (Score:4, Funny)
Go outside and download the image at the resolution you want.
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Here [hubblesite.org]
Gotta give credit to NASA. They made a 25 year old space telescope that is still better than anything that anyone else has.
Any plan to send up a better Hubble ? (Score:1)
Hubble is already 25+ year old
Sooner or later it'll have to be shut down
Has there been any plan to send up an even better replacement ?
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They made a 25 year old space telescope
That's quite a feat of temporal engineering in itself.
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Where can we download the full image ?
I just downloaded the linked pictures, they download at the maximum size available.
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the jpeg "fullsize" is actually not, it's about 9kx4k. The original fullsize mosaic is nearly 70k by 20k, you only get that if you bother to download off the magnet link.
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the jpeg "fullsize" is actually not, it's about 9kx4k. The original fullsize mosaic is nearly 70k by 20k, you only get that if you bother to download off the magnet link.
Now that's odd, I was going to the download section for each picture to download. The last two I downloaded from the jpeg thumbnail (at the time it was faster than going my downloaded area at the time) both were being sent at the same size as I had downloaded earlier (max size and different area). Mayhaps they were being pulled from the cache.
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oh additionally: the full resolution image is a photoshop binary. GIMP won't open it. No filters available.
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after a bit of digging around I managed to locate a magnet link for the 4.31GB 60kx20k image.
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:5BE3C93B5C5D9150AB819B14B90360182BD3E26C&tr=udp://tracker.publicbt.com:80&tr=udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80&tr=udp://tracker.istole.it:80&tr=http://denis.stalker.h3q.com:6969/announce&tr=udp://tracker.ccc.de:80
Meh (Score:1)
Hasn't changed much - not a single new star in all this time.
Re: we should take the hubble technology (Score:1)
The g-spot
Cool 3D effect... (Score:4, Interesting)
On the pillars comparison image, if you cross your eyes to superimpose the old image over the new image you'll see a pretty cool 3D effect. Not sure if it's something in my imagination or if the stellar motion over 20 years gives us two slightly different view of the pillars to create a kind of stereo image.
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I don't think the comparison image is from Hubble. It's got six spikes on the stars, Hubble only has four spider vanes.
Here's the "fast facts" of both the new picture and IR picture http://hubblesite.org/newscent... [hubblesite.org]
Yes they're from Hubble.
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"fast facts" of both the new picture and IR picture
Read it wrong, it happens, it's only of the new picture it was the IR at the bottom that threw me.
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I'm just wondering how much of that new Pillars image has been photoshopped. The lens flares, the sharp(ened?) contours, the contrast, it seems like an awful lot of processing was done on this image, it looks kind of posterized, and I wonder what the original looked like before they decided to make it look "better". Or is this really the raw image that came out of the telescope?
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Re: Cool 3D effect... (Score:1)
It looked like electrons vibrating an a CCD. Which is not verry interesting, so they used that data to produce colors on a screen.
I'm always baffled by people who think they know what an acceptable level of processing is. Yes, there are ethical concerns when someone is trying to deliberately be deceptive, but all images are heavilly processed from their original form. That's true whether it's digital or film, or whatever comes next.
Stars or noise (Score:2)
http://www.spacetelescope.org/... [spacetelescope.org]
Are those stars or just noise? It's really hard to tell.
Re:Stars or noise (Score:4, Informative)
Stars... If you pan around the outskirts of the image you will see that the density drops off defining the shape of the galaxy.
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Stars... If you pan around the outskirts of the image you will see that the density drops off defining the shape of the galaxy.
Noise could also be proportional to the unresolved intensity. However, you can see that the dots are actually round, and thus resolved stars, and not simple individual pixel noise.
Re:Stars or noise (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stars or noise (Score:5, Insightful)
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I zoomed all the way in to the very far right of the image and with an incredibly crude estimation, determined there were about 10,000 stars displayed on my monitor. At the darkest part of the image. Whats weird is how close together they look. How come everything looks so far away from us?
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I zoomed all the way in to the very far right of the image and with an incredibly crude estimation, determined there were about 10,000 stars displayed on my monitor. At the darkest part of the image. Whats weird is how close together they look. How come everything looks so far away from us?
The billions of tiny stars are actually nowhere near as large as they look in the picture. They are points of light that have been smudged out into little blobs by the image capturing process. The brighter the star the bigger the blob - that's why the nearer, brighter stars look much bigger, when in fact they are also virtually point sources at this scale.
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Yeah I understand the scale involved. I was just complaining. You can ignore my post and chalk it up to NSFPP (non-space-faring people problems)
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Only they wouldn't be able to see any intelligent life here, since we didn't exist yet two million years ago. By the time they can actually see us, we may have gone extinct.
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But the Earth had an oxygen (potentially biosculpted) atmosphere some 500 million years ago. So if someone there has been able to observe Earth and know something about its atmosphere, they'd know that there might be life here. We would count as "interesting".
I've read more recently that there may be other ways to have significant amounts of free oxygen in a planetary atmosphere besides biological processes. I have no idea how probable those ways are compared to life, how stable they are, how "interestin
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"Are those stars or just noise?"
It's really full of stars, Bowman.
HST's M31 vs R.Gendler's M31 (Score:3)
This image is so cool : http://hubblesite.org/newscent... [hubblesite.org]
Robert Gendler's gallery is visible here [robgendlerastropics.com]
Amazing. Rob's got a day job... (Score:2)
ESA link is borked for me. (Score:2)
When I activate the flash item, I get the following error from Zoomify:
Error loading: Image path not in HTML or XML
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Glad (kinda, in some perverse manner) that I'm not the only one.
Extending the life of Hubble... (Score:5, Interesting)
These images demonstrate that the Hubble is a national (if not international) treasure. With two U.S. rockets soon capable of delivering astronauts to LEO, there must be some way to perform some type of minimal maintenance mission to the Hubble so it can continue its mission beyond the current EOL deadline. With no suitable visible light replacement telescope on the horizon, dumping the telescope into the ocean will be a crime. This would be a marvelous opportunity for someone like Elon Musk or the executives at Boeing to step up and lobby the government to be allowed to put together such a mission.
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Re:Extending the life of Hubble... (Score:5, Insightful)
There isn't. The manned vehicles on the horizon are simply are not capable of doing so. Everyone wanted "cheap and safe" capsules, and losing practically all but the most basic manned capability in space is the price of that.
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Well, the big one I can see is that they lack an airlock for EVAs. They also lack a cargo bay for bringing up tools and replacement parts. Lastly, they don't have a remote manipulator like the shuttle's arm, which was an essential tool for the servicing missions - first for capturing and positioning the telescope, then for moving the astronauts around.
With several launches, you could put together an orbiting service platform that contains these things. Unless things c
Re: Extending the life of Hubble... (Score:1)
I'm not totally familiar with the new manned vehichle, but the primary idea was to send up the people on one rocket and all of the other cargo on another. So the only reason it couldn't service the Hubble would be if it's not powerful enough to get people there.
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Last century's motto: To Boldly Go
This century's motto: Always the Low Price. Always.
And there is the real problem... (Score:2)
This centuries motto wouldn't be a problem if idiots didn't expect us to Boldly Go - at Bargain Basement prices. And without losing any vehicles. And especially without loosing any lives.
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This centuries motto wouldn't be a problem if idiots didn't expect us to Boldly Go - at Bargain Basement prices. And without losing any vehicles. And especially without loosing any lives.
We don't Boldly Go anymore. We stand in line with our shoes off.
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One of the last things the shuttles did was a refit repair upgrade to Hubble. The Hubble is good for another decade. Well barring aliens blowing it up for peeking into their windows, or an unlucky solar flare
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So, that should give us another seven or eight years to figure out how to service the Hubble with one of the new orbital vehicles.
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Or just replace it with something better...
What is the zoomable image really showing? (Score:1)
I can imagine... (Score:4, Interesting)
...somewhere 2 million lightyears away in the Andromeda galaxy a nerd zooming into a similar high resolution image of the Milky Way galaxy, seeing a faint yellow smudge no larger than a pixel and wondering if it's a star or noise in the image.
Re:I can imagine... (Score:5, Funny)
...somewhere 2 million lightyears away in the Andromeda galaxy a nerd zooming into a similar high resolution image of the Milky Way galaxy, seeing a faint yellow smudge no larger than a pixel and wondering if it's a star or noise in the image.
(reaches over and closes blinds)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
how many megapixels is that? (Score:4, Funny)
The full image is 69,536 px by 22,230 px
Who said the megapixel war was over?
Leading Edge? (Score:5, Interesting)
Looks like the pillars have a leading edge with debris trailing off. What set something that massive, with that shape, in motion? And where is it going?
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I do realize they are clouds, they look kinda like the growth of a mushroom cloud which to me suggested a point of origin. The weird part is that the pillars are linear and not radial. Anyway I'll buy that explanation...mostly cause I don't know any better but sounds plausible enough for me to not want to spend 5 years working out the equations myself.
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First question... Is such a dust cloud inconsistent with a sun-like star somewhere inside the boundaries?
Second question... If a sun-like star can exist there, is such a dust cloud inconsistent with that star having a planetary system like ours?
Third question... Assuming the first two questions pass, and that there could be an Earth-like planet there with life that could look up into the sky and wonder, what would they see?
In other words, is that dust really still a hard vacuum, just seen from a differen
Re: Leading Edge? (Score:1)
Places with a lot of activity like this one migh5 have a lot of stars capable of supporting life. Unfortunatley they also have a lot of debris, that'll probably wipe out any life before it gets very advanced. Places to look for life are usually much less active.
Dementors... (Score:2)
Anyone else see three cloaked figures in it I/R ? (Score:1)
Looks like 3 bearded, cloaked figures at the "tips" of the columns in the infrared image.
I'm probably just weird.
So I wonder (Score:1)
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that's not lens flare, it's wire diffraction.
The Price of Art (Score:3)
Average out the cost of designing, building and orbiting a newer, better Hubble across all the people in the world who have a few extra bucks and an appreciation of that iconic photo as art...worthwhile for no other reason than for us to stare at it and be profoundly moved.
I wonder how much it would cost each person to "git 'er done".
before you hit Kickstarter... Re:The Price of Art (Score:2)
The James Webb space telescope [wikipedia.org] is scheduled for 2018 launch at the bargain price of only $8.8 billion [sen.com].
The Webb's mirror is 6.4 meters across [nasa.gov], compared to the Hubble's 2.4 meter diameter.
So roughly 32 square meters for the Webb vs. about 4.5 square meters for the Hubble.
Considering Nasa's usual tempo, another three years (2018) isn't all that long.
Very cool stuff. It is thinks like this that make me think the human race is more of a
Can I get there in Elite? (Score:1)
very pretty (Score:2)
Pillars of Creation is getting set for a cropping, and the M31 mosaic is just too damn big for anything but zipping around with Preview.
Colored pixels -- stars or noise? (Score:2)
The cluster of very blue-white pixels and wire diffraction are clearly stars. If I zoom into a fairly dark region, I see lots of red and yellow pixels as well. Are those sensor noise?
Wind direction? (Score:1)
Why do all the cloud forms follow such a similar drift pattern? Is it the movement of the stars themselves within their local group? Is there something beyond the image forcing the wind direction (other massive stars and/or a supernova are mentioned in the Wikipedia article about the Pillars). Is there a count of how many stars are being formed here? The IR image suggests quite a few.
Stunning imagery. Keep 'em coming, Team Hubble!!!
Colours in pictures? (Score:1)