Hubble Catches Some Cosmic Fireworks 92
Roland Piquepaille writes "On this Fourth of July, it's usual -- at least in the U.S. -- to watch fireworks. But I want to invite you to see very special ones, celestial fireworks discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomy Magazine has the story. "In a newly released image, the Hubble Space Telescope peers into a neighboring galaxy to capture a gorgeous view of a supernova remnant called LMC N 49. Also known as DEM L 190, the nebula lies within the Large Magellanic Cloud approximately 160,000 light-years away." Read this summary for more details and a nice illustration from the Hubble Heritage Team. You can find additional tons of information at this Hubble Heritage Project page."
God is alive and he is not happy! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:God is alive and he is not happy! (Score:3, Funny)
Awesome.
I think.
*runs*
SB
Re:God is alive and he is not happy! (Score:1)
Re:God is alive and he is not happy! (Score:1)
I posted this yesterday in another article, but it didn't escape the science section.
What does this [nasa.gov] remind you off?
Re:God is alive and he is not happy! (Score:2)
That makes sense (Score:5, Funny)
Good thing they chose a non-technical name that would be easier to remember!
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Poor guys. (Score:2, Funny)
The picture have been forged. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The picture have been forged. (Score:2, Funny)
I'll get right on that for you.
Re:The picture have been forged. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, the picture hasn't been "forged".
You're correct that the image was constructed from specific wavelengths with certain colours applied. Try going directly to the Hubble Heritage pages for this image [stsci.edu]. If you read the caption [stsci.edu] for the image you'll see:
The fast facts [stsci.edu] will tell you the exact filters used:
The numbers tell you the wavelengths in nanometres. They have possibly assigned red, green, and blue in the same wavelength order, in which case red=sulphur, green=H-alpha, and blue=oxygen.
If you really don't want to look at "cute pictures", don't look at the public outreach images. Take a closer look the original images [stsci.edu].
Hope this helps.
NOT cosmic fireworks! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:NOT cosmic fireworks! (Score:1, Troll)
Botticelli's Venus (Score:1)
Maybe it's a massive advertising campaign for Adobe Illustrator?
Re:Too U.-S.-centric! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Too U.-S.-centric! (Score:1)
this is too much... (Score:3, Funny)
Slashdot is becoming waaaaaay too Milky way-centric
Re:this is too much... (Score:1)
Just thought you might want to know.
Re:this is too much... (Score:2, Informative)
Betelgeusean (Score:2)
here is another one (Score:3, Interesting)
I was looking at this phenomenon earlier today and found out what actually causes these things.
Apparently somewhere in our Universe subatomic particles are being created with huge amounts of kinetic energy, these sparks are sent flying between galaxies at near light speeds, and these fireworks are what you see before they cool down and become invisible to telescopes.
Re:here is another one (Score:4, Informative)
Sure makes for pretty pictures!
SB
Re:here is another one (Score:1)
Also known as the Gay Swordfight Condom Nebula
Sorry, it doesn't count as fireworks... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sorry, it doesn't count as fireworks... (Score:2)
4th of July only in the USA?? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:4th of July only in the USA?? (Score:5, Funny)
According to google (Score:2, Funny)
Re:According to google (Score:2)
Geo-sensing? (Score:2)
Re:Geo-sensing? (Score:2)
Re:4th of July only in the USA?? (Score:2)
Re:4th of July only in the USA?? (Score:1)
boom - (Score:1, Offtopic)
Astronomy Picture of the day (Score:5, Informative)
7.2 Megapixel Fireworks (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry, but you're missing the point (Score:5, Informative)
- The colour portion of the pic is a composite from two or more pictures.
- The colours are so vibrant you have to assume they're retouched
- the stars in the background were added
- many of the stars have lens flares
... Photoshopped in afterward
The meat of your complaint seems to be this: Do we have to win tax-payer support by drawing Star Trek scenes and releasing them to news outlets as "science"? And that's a very valid question, even if, as I pointed out above, nothing really fishy is being done here.True, but this is always true: in order not to saturate detectors, and to remove the inevitable cosmic rays, it is typical to take lots of dithered exposures. For an example of just how serious this cosmic ray problem is, take a look at this before and after image pair [stsci.edu].
True, they are assigned, but it is very typical to get images in multiple filters, each of which has a well defined "color" - so it is easy to produce a final representative color image. Not even stretching the truth that much.
Well, they retained the stars from one image (so they were not added), and rendered that in greyscale. Artistic license, definitely.
Alas, flaring is typical: if you have bright stars in the field, the mirror obstructions (supports, secondary, etc) will produce flares. True at every optical telescope, from Palomar and Keck to the HST. Definitely not Photoshop!
My point of view, should that interest you, is this: except for a couple of very rare exceptions, every target the HST looks at is chosen after a brutal (trust me, brutal) review process. The HST costs an enormous of money to run, and they have lived up to that in terms of published peer-reviewed output per observation. So now if they kick in a few thousand extra bucks to take the science images, combine them with a little (not much, mind) artistic license, and release it to the public (who are, after all, paying for it) -- more power to them! Astronomy is one of those rare disciplines where the the excitement of cutting edge science can still be brought to the casual reader - if nothing else, as "Ooh, look, a pretty picture!" I think that is well worth it, as long as they aren't being scientifically dishonest.
(And that last point is a whole other story: do press releases over-hype the discovery? Does Nature twist a simple research result into "Unprecedented discovery revolutionizes our understanding of the Universe"? Maybe, but that's not a problem with the pretty pictures.)
Re:Sorry, but you're missing the point (Score:1)
Re:What's with all these doctored photos?!? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm sure the color table in this image was adjusted to bring out features, but real astronomers do this all the ti
Re:What's with all these doctored photos?!? (Score:5, Informative)
People need to understand that HST isn't a big Canon digital camera. There is a lot of work involved in "reducing" astronomical data into a usable form, whether for science or PR. It makes no sense to use terms like "retouched." Raw data, as read out directly from the camera, is pretty much useless for any purpose. If I have an imaging run of a couple of nights at Palomar, for example, it generally takes at least two weeks (of long days) to get that data into a scientifically useful shape, at which point we use it to select objects for further spectroscopic study. After obtaining spectra, it takes more weeks to get the spectra into useful shape. Then we can start the long process of measuring scientifically useful things and learn something.
I think you're referring to the cross-shaped diffraction spikes around stars, not lens flares. These are real. They are caused by the diffraction of light from the stars by the cross-shaped secondary mirror supports.Don't worry about "destroying any scientific value." Telescope time is precious, whether on HST or any top observatory on the ground. You get diffraction spikes around bright objects (at least "bright" by the standards of the telescope). There's no way that the bright, spikey stars were the scientific target of that image. There's no way you would waste telescope time by exposing so long that your science object saturates or is surrounded by big diffraction spikes.
Read before speaking. (Score:1)
Why do people assume that you see flares around stars? Could it be because you get them in pictures, even those taken by the Hubble? The longer an exposure is, the more at risk you are for lens flare from light sources. And, since stars are all light sources (a hard concept, I'll admit), the brighter stars in a field of view are always a risk for flares when the exposure time is set to bring out the fainter stars. Granted, nobody wants the lens flares showing up, particularly the scientists, but you can't e
Re:What's with all these doctored photos?!? (Score:2)
These images are not "doctored", at least not in the way you imply.
You are correct that they are composed from a set of single wavelength images (well, strictly, each individual image has a certain fairly narrow wavelength range defined by a filter). If you're viewing this on a three-colour RGB rather than monochrome display, that's not such a bad way of getting a quick look at three observations in one.
For those looking for wall paper or a poster (Score:5, Interesting)
Lookalike? (Score:1)
A particularly good one is here [postershop.com].
I dunno, maybe it's the caffeine or something...
Foreign Fireworks (Score:2)
Celebrating the independece of XBOX (Score:1)
Hubble - NASA Stardust - Comet Wild 2 (Score:1)
If anyone asks why I'm so interested, I have my name inscribed on One [nasa.gov] of the two microchips [nasa.gov] embedded on board the spacecraft. So is the names of my brother and sister!
Let's hope they reach the comet safely and back! Yeah, and Hubble to be available