Virtual Tour Of The Orion Nebula

DeusExLibris writes: "A scientist at Vanderbilt Unviersity has created a 3 minute long simulated fly-through of the Orion Nebula based upon Hubble and VLA measurments taken over the past 8 years. The Wasington Post has a story here. If you can wait for it to load, the fly-through is pretty cool, although less scientifically informative than I would have liked."

Coolness, whoredom, and Scott Bakula

[pubudu]

I have three points to make. The first is: that was damn cool.

The second is a bit more bitter: the Washington Post article cited talks more about the scientific issues surrounding the nebula than the movie; the movie is just an excuse to talk about the nebula. Indeed, the movie itself seems to have been created only as a ploy to get media attention for recent findings regarding the nebula (and the formation of stars in general). Even here, on /., we are directed to the movie rather than to the science by the title and story. Given, we have already discussed the impact of recent discoveries here, so our sin is not so great, but it sad when even the cool sciences must stoop to such whoredom to get an audience.

"I've discovered the Secret of Everything!"

"So?"

"It flashes a lot [for reasons I can explain]..."

"Why didn't you say so? Commence with the flashing stuff, and be sure to include some talking in the background about the flashing stuff, so the new-age music doesn't grate on my conscious mind..."

And after that rant, my third point: I kept expecting to see a starship piloted by Scott Bakula cutting through the incredibly dense nebula (remember, this is before the original Star Trek, when glass domes were still standard), but alas, the music never turned for the hipper.

What's Wrong With this Video?

[selectspec]

No naked ladies! When my government spends a few billion to put a giant telescope in orbit, I expect to see some nude shots. I get all kinds of action through my telescope.

This isn't really new

[kst]

This animation was actually done in 1999 or so. There's a lot more information at http://vis.sdsc.edu/research/orion.html [sdsc.edu]. (The Washington Post article doesn't credit the San Diego Supercomputer Center [sdsc.edu].)

American Museum of Natural History

[Squiffy]

If you'd like to see something like this in a planetarium, go to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. I just happened to be visiting NYC just after the new planetarium was built. They have a fantastic show in there that includes an Orion Nebula flythrough like this one -- and it's all displayed gigantically on the big dome ceiling. Even the waiting room is cool. They have monitors displaying some of Hubble's better photos with, IIRC, a bit of accompanying narration. Their entire space science area is worth seeing, in fact.