Largest Ever Digital Survey of the Milky Way Released 75
Several readers have written to tell us that an international team of over fifty astronomers from around the globe have created the largest ever digital survey of the Milky Way. IPHAS (INT/WFC Photometric H-alpha Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane) is an image survey designed to show large-scale structure within our galaxy. IPHAS data is being released by utilizing technology from the UK government funded open source project Astrogrid. Some of the images are quite spectacular.
Lovely (Score:5, Informative)
Click on the thumbnails for descriptions of the subject matter and the equipment and settings used.
The night sky is beautiful at every scale.
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Re:Lovely (Score:4, Informative)
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You've never been to central Missouri, then.
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Better still if you have a sea vehicle. On the East Coast, it's really tough to get away from light pollution. Ten miles straight out to sea and the stars open up. Good luck using a telescope or camera though.
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Either is more dignified than the silly little dances I do around the tripod when I get a good shot. :-)
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Unless you're taking a woman's portrait while she undresses in another apartment building, 600mm is no portrait lens
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-600mm-Super-Telephoto-Cameras/dp/B00009R6X9/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1197496457&sr=8-2 [amazon.com]
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So far, I've only used 500mm and 600mm lenses on shots of the moon. All the shots of the stars posted so far were done with 50mm and 85mm lenses. The reason is simply practical; at 500 and 600mm, the lenses I am willing to buy tend to be about f/8, which means they don't gather a lot of light. Given that, the exposure time has to be very long, and that means unless you have a tracking mount, you're going to get a bunch of star trails, very faint, if you get anything at all. The portrait lenses I use are 50
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I shoot with a canon FTb and a Nikon F3 for my astronomy shots on 1600 speed film exposed at 6400. Then push process the film 2 stops. Vastly superior to any digital shots on a prosumer DSLR.
-nB
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My current camera will go to ISO 3200, and I've got a sharp f/1.2 lens. That gives me a *lot* of room, lightwise. I suspect that as I learn, there's plenty of room for improvement before I reach any limitations of my gear. I'm clearly overexposing the shots by letting the camera decide when it has enough light; the thing is, up on a hill in the winter in Montana, fooling around isn't a great idea, unless you want to be found in the spring, gnawed on by critters. I am sure I'll learn more when the weather i
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The real issue with the current crop of cameras is the CMOS sensor. They are notorious for pixel and dark current noise.
A good deep depleted CCD will have noise margins so low as to be non-issues.
Naturally the advantage of your approach is near instant feedback, while in my case I take 5 or so shots of the same thing, bracketing exposure like mad.
And FWIW, those cold nights are vastly better for photography of the stars than warm ones.
-nB
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The big question: What ISO will your DR go to? At 1600 ISO, I can take a good star shot in 2 seconds at f1/8, basically a $70 lens. If I let the bright stars overexpose, say 6 seconds, then all kinds of faint detail comes out, like the nebulosity in Orion, even a little bit of the Pleides nebulosity, which is considerably fainter. As your ISO goes down, your time goes up, or your glass has to get faster. I have a freaky-good f/1.2 l
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I will play with the lens I have and hopefully the telescope and see how into it I am. I kinda want the telescope...
Thanks for the links
Re:Lovely (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer: I have a masters in Astronomy but I've never worked in the field. I did the degree "for fun", because I never got the opportunity to study in highschool, and because I wanted to know how we know what we know about the universe. I'm very much an amateur in every respect.
Defintely worth fiddling with camera gear, but at some point if you're taking your own shots you're going to want to use a telescope. Starting with binoculars is definitely the best way. Moving to a dobsonian for viewing (but terrible for photography) is a good next step. (Don't buy anything with a small aperture unless all you're interested in is moon and planets). Next good step would be a Newtonian on EQ mount or SCT. It gets very expensive very quickly. I pretty much gave up on astrophotography. (I live in a large city and when I do get away far enough, I'm usually exhausted from the drive, and there are other priorities (family). Also a 10" scope takes up a hell of a lot of room even in a station wagon).
An alternative to the above is to get hold of sky survey data that's already available and captured by the pro images. There's a lot out there that gets released usually after a year (to give the professional scientists time to work with it). Hubble data, Chandra X-Ray data, SOHO images. It's not all pretty composite colour pictures - you often have to learn to manipulate the images with image software or with more complex data there's specialized software that's not always for the faint of heart (often free, often Linux based). "Amateurs" have done amazing things with some of the images and data. In astronomy there is an "image" (FITS) file format that is actually more than just a simple JPEG etc. You have a background in photography so while it's not strictly RAW data in the sense that it's not coming straight off a sensor, you can think of this format as containing more information the way RAW contains more than JPEG (stuff like calibration information). More information here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FITS [wikipedia.org]
http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/fits.html [nasa.gov]
Please understand I'm not trying to discourage you from backyard astronomy. I just thought you might be interested in this too. These days the guys that take the images/capture data and the guys that analyse them are not always the same. ie. you often have technicians that specialise in running the machines.
Here are some links for you:
FITS data from lots of missions/instruments
http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/archive.html [nasa.gov]
Digitized Sky Survey
http://archive.eso.org/dss/dss [eso.org]
http://archive.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/dss_form [stsci.edu]
Hubble
http://hubblesite.org/ [hubblesite.org]
SOHO
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]
Chandra
http://chandra.harvard.edu/ [harvard.edu]
http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/ [harvard.edu]
If you want more detail and are prepared to try to work out science speak, you can get access to draft papers on:
http://arxiv.org/ [arxiv.org]
Look under astrophysics
I don't have time to go into any more. Hope you're interested.
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I'm looking at a Celestron NexStar 8SE GoTo Schmidt Cassegrain, with a T-ring and a prime focus camera adapter. It's my first telescope, so I'm not inclined to go much larger until I have a little experience. In the mean time, my camera is already challenging me.
I'm familiar with it. I wrote the FITS loader for our image processing software.
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By all accounts your NexStar should be an excellent scope for viewing. You should however be aware that there are limitations when it comes to long exposure astrophography on an alt-az mount, even with a field de-rotator. The Celestron C8-SGT 8" Go-To XLT shouldn't be much different in price, has goto, and is on an EQ mount. Bear in mind that I've not used either scope. I just know if I was going to want to do any photography I'd pick an EQ mount. It's your choice, of course.
http://www.celestron. [celestron.com]
Way to link to a 2 MB file in the summary (Score:1, Offtopic)
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Survey results (Score:5, Funny)
41% were opposed
7% had no opinion
Margin of error 2.7%
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This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
Wow.... (Score:2)
Re:Wow.... (Score:5, Funny)
I really hate when
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not enough for christmas gifts (Score:2)
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What are you going to do when you find out the aliens that inhabit those stars have already named them?
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Well, if we can kick their asses, then we'll rename them whatever the hell we want.
See "The Naming of Names" in Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles.
This should be the most accurate galactic census (Score:1, Funny)
Why do some so love staring into space? (Score:5, Interesting)
I was showing my wife the computer-generated 3D maps of the uneven, filamentous distribution of galaxies in the known universe and she commented on how it reminded her of the fingers and tendrils of water being thrown from a bucket - but thrown out in all directions. I suddenly saw gravity as a sort of surface tension, trying to bring everything back together into a nice, neutral sphere. I also suddenly saw the dark energy as the momentum of the thrower and the dark energy as the buffeted air through which the splash disperses.
It's amazing how an analogy can take something so intangiable and make it immediately accessable. I feel, however, that sometimes a simple analogy can have a negative effect as well.
Without a true appreciation of the reality of astronomical images, comparisons to clouds and swirling water can diminish the wonder.
For me, in this image I see a stunning display of incomprehensible size and volume. I see the very heart and soul of our universe laid bare; the very stuff from which everything is made - amazing!
But for someone more lay in the ways of science and astronomy (and less enthused) this simply looks like a puff of smoke.
How is it that some of us wonder and wander and some of us do not?
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> trying to bring everything back together into a nice,
> neutral sphere. I also suddenly saw the dark energy
> as the momentum of the thrower and the dark energy
> as the buffeted air through which the splash disperses.
Were you both completely stoned at the time?
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Not completely.
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I respectfully submit that you're wrong. Perhaps the pot affected your assessment of your stone-briety
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this simply looks like a puff of smoke
Some people see the human circulatory system as nothing more than pipes, etc. A sense of wonder comes with knowledge about a subject (I wouldn't stand in awe of Einstein if I didn't know how much he advanced science), and it also requires you to care about the subject. I'm willing to bet that everyone has something they're awed by, whether it's celestial phenomena, the human body, or Paris Hilton's ability to manipulate the press. Each of those things is amazing if you care to find it so.
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At our current state as a civilization I wonder if it is more important to focus on the big picture, or if we really should be working a little harder at home before tackling the cosmos. After all, Paris Hilton
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I am always amazed at the large-scale structures of the universe. Especially the way that these structures are almost always analogous to physical phenomenon on earth (perhaps no surprise or coincidence if you adhere to the anthropic principle ;)
I agree, the images are fascinating, but it is important to remember that geometries and processes scale very differently. Geometries may scale in a fractal nature, but the processes driving the creation of said geometries may vary tremendously.
Or not, of course. My whole point is that you can't equally scale geometry and process; they are independent.
Science is for children of all ages (Score:2)
Is discovery possible without such qualities? I'd say no - you wouldn't think of asking enough ques
$10 says there is life out there (Score:2, Funny)
My God! (Score:3, Informative)
Um, sorry. I just had to.
Think they'll spot any dyson spheres?
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None found yet however.
According to Wikipedia:
Given the amount of energy available per square meter at a distance of 1 AU from the Sun, it is possible to calculate that most known substances would be re-radiating energy in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Thus, a Dyson Sphere, constructed by life forms not dissimilar to humans, who dwelled in proximity to a Sun like star, made with materials similar to those available to humans, would most likely cause an increase in the amount of infrared radiation in the star system's emitted spectrum. Hence, Dyson selected the title "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation" for his published paper.
SETI has adopted these assumptions in their search, looking for such "infrared heavy" spectra from solar analogs. As of 2005 Fermilab has an ongoing survey for such spectra by analyzing data from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS).
And from the SETI Institute:
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The headline made me think of livejournal... (Score:3, Funny)
If the Milky Way had a livejournal, would it fill it up with digital surveys of such questions as
"What shape are you? Spiral, elliptical, or irregular?"
and
"What is your spectrum?"
The sweet you can eat... (Score:2)
Giant black hole whistles happily, than sings to itself:
"The sweet you can eat between meals - without ruining your appetite. (slurp.) Milky Way."
Those Images (Score:1)
Anyone care to annotate the Rosette image? (Score:2)
Thats a great eye catching image (1.8Mb) but the notes on the website are sketchy. Does anyone know more about what to look for? Is there any kind of annotated image labelling the key parts and giving more info on why they are important?
3d maps (Score:2)
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Yes, but the turn-by-turn driving directions are soooo boring. They just tell you to keep going straight every 2 minutes for like ten thousand years.
Can anyone find any other pictures but the..... (Score:1)
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More photos, and an easter egg (Score:4, Informative)
Bonus goatse easter egg [ucl.ac.uk]