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Space Science

Hubble Snaps Pix Of Dying Supernova 109

Posted by Hemos from the explosion-of-a-thousand-suns dept.
The Hubble has taken some great pictures of a supernova according to CNN. You can get a more indepth article, and more pictures from Space.com story on the same subject. Purty explosions!
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Hubble Snaps Pix Of Dying Supernova More

Hubble Snaps Pix Of Dying Supernova

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  • I'm dissapointed by the size of the pictures in either story. Does anyone know where I might be able to find bigger pictures? (I need a new background. :))
  • I love science. I love big science. But science is more than pretty pictures. It is a process of creating, testing and destroying hypotheses to push our knowledge to the edge of the envelope.

    The Hubble telescope does none of these things. Of course, neither does an electron microscope or a hammer--because they are merely tools. But when wielded by a trained, creative and insightful scientist they can help produce startling new theories that make our life better.

    But the Hubble telescope isn't in the hands of trained, creative and insightful scientists. It is in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians who dole out a minute here and a minute there on whatever pet projects they happen to favor. When Scientist A creates a theory based on an observation made with Hubble, these chairwarmers refuse to let Scientist B use the 'scope to attempt demolish that theory for fear it will make Hubble look bad.

    We obviously can't afford to make enough for everyone, so the only solution is to let no one have it. Decommission the Hubble

    • We obviously can't afford to make enough for everyone, so the only solution is to let no one have it. Decommission the Hubble

      The beurocracy also leaves in it's wake bitter would-be scientists who have nothing better to do than post on Slashdot.

    • You have a knack for trolling, PhysicsGenius. I've been watching you.

      The Hubble helps the scientific process in all of the ways it should. These /.ers who think your post is informative are already desperate to believe that bureaucrats capriciously stifle science.

      Dealing with limited resources is a fact of life. The Hubble project has done far more for real science than it has for the front pages of newspapers and the public's self-esteem for knowing their taxes pay for it all.

    • Re:Hubble wins again! (Score:3, Informative)

      by LMCBoy ( 185365 )
      You make a remarkably ill-informed post for someone with the arrogance to give themselves a nick like PhysicsGenius.

      Your assertions that only projects which will make HST "look good" get time, and that approved HST projects must conform to the narrow vision of a small number of people, are demonstrably false. Anyone who knows the first thing about modern telescope scheduling in general (and HST's scheduling in particular), knows that it's just about the opposite of what you claim.

      Observing time on HST is not determined by "bureaucrats" nor by "politicians". The Time Allocation Committee (TAC) is comprised of active research astronomers, who judge the huge number of proposals on scientific merit. The TAC members are different every observing semester, and they all come from outside of STScI (the institute which "runs" HST). Indeed, those who are selected to be on the TAC have a wide variety of interests and perspectives on how "important" a particular project is. I'm sure you can understand how this diversity of opinion leads to a more objective judgement by the TAC as a whole. In other words, the rotating TAC system does a good job of reflecting the opinion of the entire astronomical community.

      In short, you have no idea what you're talking about. Why would a "PhysicsGenius" make up slanderous statements about one of the greatest scientific instruments ever constructed? The mind boggles...
      • The Time Allocation Committee (TAC) is comprised of active research astronomers, who judge the huge number of proposals on scientific merit.

        Just for fun, here are the gory details [stsci.edu] (see page 3).

      • Not only the Hubble, but just about every telescope out there (NSF funded ones especially) have the "Open Sky" policy. This says any person (note:not necessarily astronomer) who submits a proposal which is deemed the best use of the facilities gets the time they need. Also, this doesn't just apply (in the case of US scopes) to native observers, anyone in the world can apply and their project is judged solely on scientific merit.
      • LMCBoy writes:
        You make a remarkably ill-informed post for someone with the arrogance to give themselves a nick like PhysicsGenius. ... In short, you have no idea what you're talking about. Why would a "PhysicsGenius" make up slanderous statements about one of the greatest scientific instruments ever constructed? The mind boggles...
        Um, maybe PhysicsGenius is Stephen Wolfram's nick. Then again, PhysicsGenius *didn't* ask for us to replace HST with a copy of mathematica and rule 42 when we decommission it.



        ...it's a joke, dammit!
      • He was obviously trolling. When someone literate says something mind-bogglingly stupid and irrational, a little alarm should go off in your head. This is slashdot: your hoax detector should always be on full alert.
        • I know he's a troll; I don't care. When I see anti-science jibber-jabber on /., I feel the need to debunk it. Some people might have taken him seriously. He is, after all, a PhysicsGenius.

  • dying supernova? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Xzzy ( 111297 )
    What the heck is a "dying supernova" supposed to be?

    If a supernova is the act of a star "dying" and throwing off it's outer layers, does that then mean that a supernova is the zombie of the star, and when the supernova died, some cosmic cleric cast turn undead on it?

    Perhaps fading supernova remnant would have been a better choice. ;)
    • As any reasonably intelligent and non-pedantic slashdot reader knows, the process of a star's supernova has a beginning, which one might call the "birth" of the supernova, and an end.... which might be called the "death" of the supernova.

      The pictured supernova is near its end, or "death". That means, one might say, it's "dying".

      I'm sick of nit-picky dorks karma-whoring with word games. We knew what the phrase meant... let it drop.

  • You beat me to it... (Score:3, Informative)

    by SkyLeach ( 188871 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2002 @03:47PM (#3817468) Homepage
    A supernova (as in this instance) is a dying Star not a dying supernova. The supernova is actually quite young.
    • Lemme follow up before I get flamed for that last statement. The supernova (they claim) is old.

      Well then, why did its "dying light first reached Earth some 320 years ago, scientists said on Wednesday". Shouldn't a dying supernova's light have been reaching earth a long time ago if we are perciving it in our relative time as old? I mean, assuming that TOR is correct we should have been seeing this supernova now for a long arse time shouldn't we? Nebulas last longer than just 400 years last I checked, and nebulas are supposedly created by supernova so what gives?
      • Well, the fact that nebulas are called nebulas and not "old supernovas" should give you a hint. A corpse rotting a grave is also not called an "old dying human".

        IOW this is not a supernova, it's the remains of a supernova. It's not dying, it's dead.

        • "Its not dying, its dead"
          Reminds me of a parrot sketch I once heard

          Point of fact though a supernova is all about life. Almost all of the elements heavier than iron were made in Supernova and the rest of the stuff that walks about thinking its alive came out of novas. -As all the elements heavier than hydrogen are made in stars. So if you wind the clock along quick enough in some sense you are looking at the birth of life. Mind you it probably didnt do much good to the local wildlife when it went off.

          It all depends on your sense of perspective realy.
          (I used to have one of those before windows networking problems).

    • >My $0.02 will always be worth more than your 0.02, so :P

      What...even when most of what was Russia is part of the Eurozone? How about when you add bits of Africa? Asia? Still convinced?
  • To quote the CNN/Reuters article: Timed to precede the U.S. Independence Day holiday on Thursday, the newly released image was made in two exposures, one in January 2000, the other in January 2002.

    And what will everybody remember? That nice supernova that was photographed by Hubble the Great just before July 4th.

    Nice PR job, NASA. I appreciate it. Sincerely.
    • What happened to the 'good ol' days' when they'd have a neat-o Martian rover for the US Independence day? That was exciting. Now it's just a bunch of space fotos from an orbiting 'scope.

  • I used to go to slashdot to get information that wasn't available elsewhere; I don't if it's just because today is a slow tech news day or whatever, but posting stuff that's been on CNN or MSNBC's webpage for so long they no longer keep it on the front page doesn't make slashdot look very important. Why copy their stories? There's gotta be better content out there.
  • This isn't news!! I've seen pics of supernovas all the time! God! Doesn't anybody watch Star Trek??!?!?!

    Heh. :)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • What, are they using it to do traffic reports now?

  • Aspheric explosions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2002 @04:02PM (#3817601) Journal
    That passing line in the space.com article about lack of symmetry connects to some interesting physics.

    Scientists were embarrassed for a while by the fact that the most realistic computer models of supernovae would fizzle instead of exploding. A simulated shock wave would start from the core, but with the mass of a star falling in on it the shock wave always stalled.

    Then they switched from 1-dimensional simulations to 2-dimensional simulations when they got hold of enough computer power. Turns out there's an overturn instability. The shock wave can't make it out *on average* but does locally. Some small fluctuation gets bigger as the shock wave pounds at it and that direction gets more of the action.

    Which explained an old observation that a lot of supernova remnants were moving pretty fast. Among other things, the supernova is a rocket engine with peak power equal to the luminosity of a galaxy, and (forgive me) astronomical amounts of propellant.

    That was a qualitative insight from a quantitative increase in computer power.

  • 4th of July (Score:3, Funny)

    by KlippoKlondike ( 558812 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2002 @04:02PM (#3817603)
    Screw bottlerockets, i want me one of them!
    • I think screwing a bottlerocket would prove to be quite painful.
  • As an astronomer who studies Cassiopeia A- I will admit that this picture doesn't really say alot to the public other than "Hey pretty picture" and it is NOT a dying star! The reason it is of interest is because the Chandra Space Telescope first saw evidence of a point source at Cas A's center indicating a remnant of the supernova explosion that hasn't been seen in any other wavelengths. Much as a few of us have tried we have not been able to find a source in optical or infrared for the x-ray point source indicating that the progenitor star that made the supernova may infact be a black hole rather than a neutron star which is what makes this object so interesting.
  • http://www.seds.org/~spider/spider/Vars/casA.html

  • ... if they would have showed the actual center or origin point. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there not suppose to be a pulsar left over by the explosion?

    Looking at the larger pictures, its difficult to tell where the pulsar is...
    • I think you may have a nova and a supernova confused.

      If I remeber my astronomy correctly, a supernova is when the entire star "panics" and "goes byebye." In other words there is nothing left but the expanding debris cloud. I do not remember the details and I am not current on the theories on the matter, but I remember something about the stellar core starting to fuse iron and the neutrino emissions not being able to make it out of the star's gravity well.

      A nova is where a star blasts off its outer layers. This can happen if it is near a companion star and draws off too much of the companion star's gases or in the death throws of a large mass star where the outer layers are blasted off leaving the ultra dense iron core(AKA neutron star or pulsar if its magnetic poles do not line up with its rotational poles) or a black hole(or whatever). The debris cloud is then called a planetary nebula(a misnomer that stuck).
      • Actually, there is quite a bit left over after a supernova. Here is a VLA radio image of Cas A [nasa.gov]. If you see the area of high emission on the right edge of the expanding cloud, that is thought to be the compact object (probably neutron star) flying off from the force of the supernova.
  • There isn't a lot of colour in the night sky even through a good telescope. I know this from theory and observation, but even so I goggle along with everyone else at the false colour, saturated colour images that they come out with.

    Must be our monkey brains hardwired for picking out speckles of colour that mean ripe bananas in that tree over there!

    • Re:The amazing thing is the colours (Score:4, Informative)

      by LMCBoy ( 185365 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2002 @04:41PM (#3817984) Homepage Journal
      The colors in this particular image are especially misleading.

      In most HST "pretty-picture" images, the colors are at least representative of reality. You take three images, through "blue", "green" and "red" filters, then stack them, with each layer driving the appropriate R,G,B value of the color composite. The result may be more saturated than reality, but you get at least some idea of how it would look to your eye.

      However, this image is a stack of "narrow-band" images, centered on particular atomic emission lines. These narrow-band images are incredibly useful scientifically, because they let you study the energetics and chemistry inside the SN remnant, as well as the shock conditions of the gas. However, the colors are assigned arbitrarily, and have no connection to how the object would actually look.

      Unfortunately I saw no caveat to this effect in either the CNN article (no suprise) nor the space.com article (mildly disappointing).

      I mean, why not add a phrase in there like: "In reality, Cas A is not so colorful. The vivid colors are added to the image to help scientists map out different chemicals and their ionization states, which allows them to determine the strength of the original explosion, and how it has evolved to its present state."
      • The space.com article does link directly to an article called "Why Reality is a Gray Area in Astronomy" which explains such things.

        I found this quote pretty stupid though: "Interestingly, all Hubble images are created with black-and-white cameras. Ones and zeros are sent to Earth. Color is dropped in later with the popular Photoshop program."

        Especially the "ones and zeros" bit. That sort of implies that the images are true black and white, not even gray scale. But of course gray scale, as well as true color, can be represented with binary data.

        If it is made using red, green and blue filters, and then the channels are reassembled, that is, in my opinion, true color. It is no different that what color film or video does. But if it really is just arbitrarily colored with photoshop, that's a whole different thing.
      • From the sidebar to the space.com article:
        "Colors highlight parts of the debris where chemical elements are glowing. The dark blue fragments, for example, are richest in oxygen. The red material is rich in sulfur. Green areas were originally recorded as orange-red but recolored to visually separate them."

        While not spelling everything out, I do think that indicates that the image was recolored, and why.
      • However, the colors are assigned arbitrarily, and have no connection to how the object would actually look.

        I think that they were trying to faithfully represent the way the object would actually look to an alien creature that posseses narrow band emission line color vision.

  • Is the from the dept of ... a reference to the third Sten book, The Court of a Thousand Suns [amazon.com], by Chris Bunch and Allan Cole?
  • "Colors highlight parts of the debris where chemical elements are glowing. The dark blue fragments, for example, are richest in oxygen. The red material is rich in sulfur. Green areas were originally recorded as orange-red but recolored to visually separate them."

    Anyway... anyone know where to get wallpaper sized hubble pics? That would look cool on my desktop :-)
  • Hubble phots need to be easier to find and browse any current system i have looked at has been really disappointing. The photos can really be amazing but you either get tiny pictures or you can't find what you want.
  • I just can't believe it. First Princess Di and now the paparazzi are using Hubble to rob the dignity of a dying star.
  • thx for letting me down easy !!

    *cries*
  • uhm, let's see ... the article mentioned debris being flung at 75 billion meters per hour. That's 270 trillion meters per second, or 2.7e12 m/s. The speed of light is a bit less than 3e8 m/s ... isn't this incredible observation more exciting than an exploding star? :)
    • whoops, i mean, 72 million km/hr. That's more like 2.6e12 m/s. Still pretty fast.

    • Millions of Miles and a Metric Trick (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mattr ( 78516 ) <mattrNO@SPAMtelebody.com> on Thursday July 04, 2002 @12:13AM (#3820338) Homepage Journal
      Everyone knows light travels at 186,282 miles per second. At least I've known that since elementary school, nearly 30 years ago.

      Multiply by 3600 sec/hour and you will see that one light-hour is about 671 million miles.

      So if a supernova shockwave is moving at 45 million miles an hour, that's 45/671 or about 6.7% the speed of light in a vaccuum.

      It works in metric too of course..
      1 light-second is about 300,000 km/s (a third of a million km/s)
      1 light-hour is then about 1000 million km/s, and 72/1000 or 7/100 gives you about 0.07c.

      So next time you see a number of million kilometers per hour from CNN you can just divide it by ten and that is the percentage of the speed of light.

      I think when we talk about this scale of velocity we need something better than "million miles/kilometers per second" and more tangible than a fraction of c.

      • So how about milli-lights? (Maybe I just invented it? --or is it a CG flick?) Sounds better than gigameters too.

        1 milli-light = 1 mc = 0.001 c = 1 million km/sec = 0.67 million miles = 1 gigameter.

        It is useful for CNN and promotion of space to the public because instead of saying "72 million km per hour" (which should be 72 gigameters/hour which abbreviated would unfortunately look like gram-meters/hour..)
        ..You can just say 72 milli-lights.

    • When converting to meters per second from meters per hour, you'll want to divide by 3600, not times by 3600.

      Just in case you weren't joking, I thought I'd clear that up...

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