Clearest Photos Ever Of Horsehead Nebula 139
angkor writes "A new composite image created from high-res photographs. Wow, just wow. You can see it at SpaceFlightNow."
Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.
If you look closely enough... (Score:4, Funny)
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.
Humor Impaired [Re:If you look closely enough...] (Score:1)
What a waste it is to lose one's joke [xmission.com].
Re:Humor Impaired [Re:If you look closely enough.. (Score:2, Redundant)
It was habit in this show to put the sponsor's brand in the secret message. The particular message decoded when the film's protagonist decoded his first secret message with the decoder ring was, you guessed it: "Be sure to drink your ovaltine."
Sorry, but I think I ressurected this phrase a few days ago with this link [slashdot.org] and this link [slashdot.org].
Re:Humor Impaired [Re:If you look closely enough.. (Score:2)
Re:If you look closely enough... (Score:1)
European Southern Observatory (Score:5, Informative)
Re:European Southern Observatory (Score:5, Informative)
A fixed version of the link (Score:2)
Re:European Southern Observatory (Score:2, Interesting)
this breaks plain text urls and it is often better to include the href
of course now trolls can put an href with innocent text and it goes to goatse
the new [domain.com] suffix to urls entry is ok but of course trolls quickly noticed that you can put
http://www.yahoo.com/redirector?http://goatse
and it shows up as [yahoo.com]
(just an example - it doesn't actually redirect)
it's a never ending arms race for sure!
Wow!!! Beats the view from my 60mm refractor :-) (Score:1)
Re:Wow!!! Beats the view from my 60mm refractor :- (Score:3, Informative)
About the exposure time, I'm sure that it wasn't too long. The VLT is composed of 4 telescopes, each with a 8.2 meters mirror. Most likely, only one of them was used, but even in this case, a few minutes would be enough to saturate the CCD
Re:Wow!!! Beats the view from my 60mm refractor :- (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wow!!! Beats the view from my 60mm refractor :- (Score:2)
I still break out the old 4 1/4 to show the kids. Now, I just want a regional power failure on a clear night so they can see it the way it was meant to be seen.
RD
Re:Wow!!! Beats the view from my 60mm refractor :- (Score:1)
Re:code is no different (Score:2)
It's also very difficult to see, as suggested by the fact that it doesn't have a Messier number.
Re:code is no different (Score:3, Funny)
Yep. The Great Orion nebula, aka M42, is a naked-eye object under any reasonably un-light-polluted sky. I see it well in 7x50 binoculars, and it's amazing in my 115 mm telescope. I see 4 stars in the Trapezium easily, and under good conditions the nebula is faintly green. It photographs as pink, but that's another story about the different spectral response of the humn eye and colour film.
The Horsehead nebula, on the other hand, is tough. I have photographs that show M42 clearly, with a limiting magnitude about 7.5, but not a hint of I434 and friends, which is 3 degrees north of M42.
...laura, looking forward to seeing NGC3372 aka the Eta Carinae nebula in a few weeks
space is pink (Score:1)
I wonder what that nebula sounds like.
Re:space is pink (Score:3, Interesting)
The dark adapted human eye loses a lot of its colour sensitivity, so images seen at night tend to be 'black and white', but even so, it is much more sensitive at 500 than 650nm. This is why nebula such as M42/43 (The 'Great' Orion nebula) and the nearby Horsehead nebula look to be a pale blue-green to the eye. The types of colour film used in astrophotography, and CCD cameras, are highly sensitive to 650nm, but 500nm falls into the less sensitive area between two of the colour emulsion layers of film. This means that photographs come out pink.
Horse? (Score:1)
I've never seen a horse bend its neck like that..
In a few hundred years.... (Score:3, Interesting)
All the names we give to these things will be obsolete. We will have to go back to calling them NGC3098239874 or whatever.
I will mostly miss the flipping finger shape from one of those Hubble images. I forgot which nebula it was, but I would love a poster of the finger section. Anybody remember where the "Finger Nebula" was? Much more intruging than the Mars Face.
Carina Nebula (Score:1)
Yeah!, you found the Flippoff Nebula! (Score:1)
(* Not sure if this is what you are talking about, but this [nasa.gov] looks like a "flipping finger." *)
Yeah, thats it! Cool isn't it. God or aliens flipping off the human race?
Do you suppose they would spend taxpayer money to zoom in on it in later missions? Otherwise the blow-up would look grainy/fuzzy. I want a *nice* poster.
It even has a "baby finger" next to it. How cute.
Perhaps they can name the baby the Commute Nebula
Thanks!
So how long till the Krikkit wars? (Score:1)
very nice but... (Score:3, Interesting)
In looking at this I'd appreciate some knowledge of the physical scale of the phenomenon, not in arc-seconds of sky image but in kilometers of extent of the feature.
It must be enormous, but how enormous? Anyone?
Re:very nice but... (Score:5, Informative)
Using the Angular size calculator [geocities.com] (beware: Excel xls file), given a distance of 1.700 light-years, and an apparent width of about 6 x 4 arc-minutes, we have that the nebula is roughly 3 x 2 light-years across.
It doesn't sound much, but it's almost 30,000,000,000,000 kilometers tall, with a width of 20,000,000,000,000 kilometers. The 3rd dimension is not known, but probably on the same order of magnitude.
Re:very nice but... (Score:3, Interesting)
This cloud that is light-years across could be mistaken for a tiny puff of muddy water a couple of millimeters in diameter. The ratio in volume between the two systems would be something like 10^57, but they look almost identical.
Hi-res (Score:1)
Re:Hi-res (Score:1)
Here, at JPL [nasa.gov]. .
For reasons that escape me, the bicycling site bikindex has some nice shots, here [bikindex.com]
The European Space Agency here [esa.int].
The Gardener
Re:Hi-res (Score:1)
Annoys the hell out of me when "news" sites don't have links to relevant sources of information, or to the very places they got the "news" from. Here [eso.org] is the ESO page.
However here [noao.edu] are the puppies you really want. Spectacular as a desktop.
Reportedly... (Score:1, Flamebait)
The astronomers were able to locate similar structures in the universe, some much closer to us than previously expected. Thus, the infamous "Horseshit Nebula" has been spotted in the Western Hemisphere and its origins were successfully traced to the Microsoft PR department.
Re:Reportedly... (Score:2)
Geez, it's like you've never worked with PR people. The joke is aimed at them, not Microsoft.
Damn, still not good enough! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Damn, still not good enough! (Score:1)
Egyptians... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's common knowledge by now that the ancient Egyptians tried to recreate Heaven on Earth - look at the positioning and size of the pyramids on the Giza plateau as compared to the constellation of Orion's Belt. Even the Milky Way is represented by the Nile in the bigger picture.
I keep expecting to see Kheops' face in the nebula or something...
Re:Egyptians... (Score:2, Insightful)
Its common knowledge that Graham Hancock thinks this - however the argument against it is fairly convincing and the mainstream DOES NOT ACCEPT this theory at all.
In fact if you have considered Grahams argument closely I doubt you would believe it - there are some fairly serious "kludges" in it even for the casual observer
mark
Re:Egyptians... (Score:2)
Re:Egyptians... (Score:1)
alternate picture (Score:4, Funny)
Re:code is no different (Score:1)
That extension off to the left, that's a tail.
Look just to the right of center (Score:1, Offtopic)
-Legion
Re:Look just to the right of center (Score:1)
either that or the universe is a lot scarier place than we thought!
momma!
Re:Look just to the right of center (Score:1)
i guess humans will try to resolve familiar images out of anything huh?
either that or the universe is a lot more scary than we thought...
momma!
Re:Look just to the right of center (Score:2)
Moderators: read the article and look at the pictures before you start throwing ill-informed "Offtopic" mods around (yes, *this* comment will be modded into a bottomless pit, but the parent was actually on-topic).
-Legion
72dpi ought to be enough for anyone... (Score:2)
Anyone got a link to a higher quality version?
DPI? (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't refer to digital images via DPI. It just doens't translate. It's meaningless.
You can't measure data with a ruler.
So.. why do you say it's 72dpi?
Re:DPI? (OT) (Score:1)
To be exact, at 72 dpi, a block of 72 x 72 pixels will translate to 5184 dots on 1 square inch on paper. Hence, Dots Per Inch. What you described is 72ppi.
Yeah, I know those are commonly incorrectly mixed.
Re:72dpi ought to be enough for anyone... (Score:1)
How long... (Score:1)
camera onto my backyard computer-tracking 12" Dobsonian and take pictures like this myself. Of course for concrete canyon dwellers we have the 60mm refractor w/camera for more "earthly" observations...
What does it look like? Nothing. (Score:3, Interesting)
186 Would a nebula look colorful if you traveled into it?
Interstellar space is filled with a thin gas, and in some places this gas forms clouds. When stars form in these gas clouds, they light up the cloud, forming spectacular nebulosities of colored light as the gases in the cloud are stimulated by the light from the individual stars. Although nebulas like the ones in Plates 2 and 7 [in the book] are lovely and colorful, you would see nothing at all if you were inside one because the gases are so spread out in space and there is no blank sky against which to see the contrast. At a density of only a few hundred atoms per cubic centimeter, most nebulas are better than the best vacuums we can make on Earth, and as such, it would be impossible to see anything of their color if you were inside one of them. I am always amused by movies that portray a starship inside or very near a very colorful nebula or with background skies swirling with color. In reality, nature is far less colorful, and even the Great Nebula in Orion, with all of its color, would be almost invisible from inside.
Re:What does it look like? Nothing. (Score:2)
This doesn't make sense. The nebula filters out a certain amount of light, or reflects a certain amount of light from nearby stars. If you were in the middle of the nebula, about half the amount of gas would be between you and the rest of space, so you would still be able to see it - particularly areas of differing density.
Or to put it another way, why would you be able to see the light from far away from the source, but not close to it?
The bit about the spacecraft is true, but only because there would be no movement against the nebula - it's far too spread out. And of course you would not see the nebula moving any more than you can from earth.
It really does... (Score:2)
High-res originals here! (Score:1, Redundant)
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2002/p
Clearest photos? I don't think so (Score:5, Informative)
--Seen
Re:Clearest photos? I DO think so (Score:4, Informative)
Compare ESO's [eso.org] version (largest is 4.6MB JPEG @ 1951x2366)
and
any on Hubble's page [stsci.edu] (wide @ 800x813, closeup @ 1000x800).
NOAO has better images [noao.edu] than Hubble's too, but they're also wide angle (but still really nice)...
Hubble's MPEG movie animation is very cool though.
Number of pixels is not a measure of clarity (Score:2)
The artice is a little fuzzy about the details so it's rather difficult to say if it is, in fact better than the Hubble shot, it does look better to my eye, but sometimes your eyes can decieve you.
On the other hand, if you're only talking about which image makes a better desktop background....
Re:Clearest photos? I DO think so (Score:2)
VLT/Hubble image comparison (Score:2)
1. The Hubble image was done in one shot, but did not have to compensate for atmospheric interference.
2. The VLT image was done by compositing several images, digitally-processed to remove atmospheric interference.
I can't wait for the Hubble replacement now in early development.
Re:Clearest photos? I don't think so (Score:1)
Maybe (Score:1)
New picture of horse's arse. (Score:1)
Has anyone got a decent 1600x1200 of this we can download without bothering these wankers?
Re:New picture of horse's arse. (Score:3, Informative)
Remember, Google [google.com] is your friend.
And driven by open source software ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Stuff like this... (Score:1)
Re:Stuff like this... pictures (Score:1)
There's links to a bunch of their pictures at
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/96/01.html
The big picture (2 MB) is at http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/96/01/MosaicF
Re:Stuff like this... pictures (Score:1)
Bah, horseheads (Score:1)
the Pee-Wee Herman face on Mars?
Why does it look... (Score:2)
Is there a light source there, or is it an artifact of their image processing or something else?
Re:Why does it look... (Score:3, Informative)
Uhh what?? (Score:1)
Hooded face (Score:1)
Re:Hooded face (Score:2)
Often, when viewing pictures of nebula people will see faces. The first time I say a picture I say a bunch of faces that immediatly reminded me of the dwarves from The Hobbit.
amazing how much it... (Score:1)
The Death's Head nebula? (Score:2)
If you look at the "head of the horse's", travel down the right side of the "neck", there's a gap where you can see through the image. Am I the only one who sees an image like the masked villian in Scream (the movie)? It was the first thing that I noticed and I was suprised that no one else mentioned it since it seems very clear to me.
I just throught that I'd mention it since I didn't see anyone else saying this and I start to question whether I'm just seeing inkblot images where other people are seeing butterflies.
Otherwise the pictures are truly amazing. What an amazing universe we live in, and how little can we see from our little section of it.
Re:The Death's Head nebula? (Score:1)
Re:The Death's Head nebula? (Score:1)
new title (Score:1)
I guess I don't see much difference (Score:1)
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/2001/12/
Re:I guess I don't see much difference (Score:1)
Re:God (Score:1)