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Space Science

Getting Ready To Map The (Visible) Universe 34

Posted by timothy from the just-our-little-neighborhood-really dept.
phanki writes "The Arecibo Observatory is gearing up to map the universe soon. This article talks about the university getting a set of new radio recievers to complete the background work for the mapping process. So very soon we may have the map for the Andromeda !"
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Getting Ready To Map The (Visible) Universe More

Getting Ready To Map The (Visible) Universe

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  • Useless to real men (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mr.Sharpy ( 472377 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @01:56PM (#6351954)
    While this map may very well aid the fairer sex navigate the stars someday, we real men will do as we have for thousands of years...wander aimlessly claiming that we are not lost.

  • Mapquest (Score:2, Funny)

    by Nimrod ( 2809 )
    When do we think Mapquest will have this available.

    • Re:Mapquest (Score:3, Funny)

      by jpsst34 ( 582349 )
      Sure, that would be great for getting driving directions to the general vicinity of some distant galaxy, but it's BFS algorithm is sure to mix up the turns and landmarks of the last 30,000 light years or so.
    • With such a large antenna, I wonder if they use it to get the Playboy channel when they aren't observing some astronomical anomaly?

  • Cheesy sci-fi map (Score:3, Funny)

    by PeteyG ( 203921 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @02:02PM (#6352005) Homepage Journal
    So very soon we may have the map for the Andromeda !

    Hah, I can already download those in blueprint form off of a Kevin Sorbo fansite.

    Bring me the map for the SeaQuest DSV, and then we'll talk.

    • Wet trek! (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by AtariAmarok ( 451306 )
      Someone actually remembers the old "Wet Trek" show, where the acting bar was so low that members of the Deloise family outshined everyone else in the show?

      Where Roy Scheider always had this tired "I got dragooned into this because of JAWS" look on his face?
  • Would be great if Sega was doing this for a game, like their Carbondale mapping effort [slashdot.org].

    The Universal Horror Game.

  • Looking for good radio, huh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jpsst34 ( 582349 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @02:10PM (#6352073) Journal
    "The 1,000-foot-wide parabolic receiver - composed of 38,000 aluminum tiles - allows researchers to listen to sounds in space..."

    Geez. The lengths some guys will go to just to be able to listen to radio that isn't controlled by ClearChannel!

  • Teenagers (Score:2, Funny)

    by Z0mb1eman ( 629653 )
    "The Arecibo Observatory is gearing up to map the universe soon"

    Heh... why does that sentence make me think of a lazy teenager?

    "Clean your room!"
    "Moooooom, I said I'll do it soooon!!!"

    "Map the universe!"
    "I'll do it tomorrow!!!"

  • Misleading article, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by barakn ( 641218 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @02:37PM (#6352327)
    Getting Ready To Map The (Visible) Universe is a bad title, as the word 'visible' in astronomy means light with wavelengths between ~380 nm and 780 nm, while Arecibo looks at stuff from 3 cm to 6 m.. Also, the AP news article repeatedly equates the radio telescope with a listening device, though it can map the sky at resolutions better than most telescopes.

  • Final Fontier (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Strange Ranger ( 454494 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @02:53PM (#6352466)
    An interesting aspect of space exploration is that it's the only frontier we've ever attempted to explore with decent maps already in hand.

    In the past, from Moses to Marco Polo to Columbus, maps were impossible. They tried to draw them as they went along.

    We'll probably never again be at a point where we say "What in the heck is out there?" We'll never again have Uncharted Territory. But rather we say "What in the heck will that look like up close." In a way it's kind of sad to lose that mystery. But in a way it's pretty cool to explore Charted Territory that has never been explored before.

    A silly example of the difference this makes is turning off the Fog Of War on your favorite video game... Profoundly changes the whole nature of the game. No more thinking you landed on the coast of India and getting the name of an entire race wrong. All the mysteries start and stop with the limitations of our "long range sensor sweeps". I don't know where I meant to go with this... I guess it's sad on one hand that "totally uncharted territory" is forever gone, but on the other hand the trade off in speed of discovery, safety, return on investment, etc, will be pretty incredible, and well worth it to all but the terminally romantic.

    • Re:Final Fontier (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @11:13PM (#6355828)
      We'll probably never again be at a point where we say "What in the heck is out there?" We'll never again have Uncharted Territory. But rather we say "What in the heck will that look like up close."

      This is only partly true. Many space objects are the next best thing to invisible. Barring a really concerted (and expensive) effort, we won't have maps of, say, the Kupier belt that are anywhere close to complete. Even closer to home, we only have records for the _big_ asteroids in the belt (and inner solar system).

      Similarly, while we've found at least one white dwarf star in our local neighbourhood, others may very well exist that we aren't noticing - they're quite dim. Smaller objects, like gas giants ejected from systems during formation and drifting in interstellare space, or the myriad of objects in the Oort cloud, may not ever be found - unless an object emits a lot of light or is both large and quite close to a bright light source (like a star), it's lost in the void.

      Think of our medium-term mapping situation as the equivalent of having the tourist brochures for the area we want to visit, and our current maps as being the blurb on the back of them. Still plenty to discover.

      • Re:Final Fontier (Score:2, Informative)

        by dnahelix ( 598670 )
        Very good points. There are also many other galactic objects that block our view, like Bok Globules [nasa.gov], and large nebulae like the Eagle Nebula [hubblesite.org].

        • Re:Final Fontier (Score:4, Informative)

          by dpp ( 585742 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @07:57PM (#6364152)

          True, those objects block our view at optical wavelengths, but they can be transparent (well, optically thin) at submillimetre wavelengths. I work for the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope [hawaii.edu], which is the world's largest single-dish submillimetre-wave telescope. The JCMT has, for example, seen into the cores of the famous pillars in the Eagle Nebula.

        • At lot can show through a dust cloud at the right wavelengths, and you don't even have to go as far as radio astronomy to get some good detail of what's going on behind the scenes.

          ESO (European Southern Observatory) shows the dark cloud Barnard 68 as it appears in various visible and infrared wavelengths here [eso.org]. It's quite striking how transparent the cloud becomes in the near-infrared.

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