This has been an interesting BABlog week! I decided to dome some ’splainin, and it’s gone a bit farther than I expected. We covered galaxies, black holes, a weird moon, and a big chunk of the old electromagnetic spectrum.
That last bit is really something. I have found that despite it being a national science standard for middle school, most people understand the EM spectrum fairly poorly. There are lots of reasons for this, and I won’t go into them here. Instead, I’ll show you how cool looking at things with “different eyes” is.
Oh, wait. I don’t need to do this. I have friends who already have! The folks at the Spitzer Space Telescope have a pretty good outreach group, and they have a wonderful series of web pages called Cool Cosmos. That’s a pun, actually: Spitzer, which is an infrared telescope, looks at objects considered to be cooler than your typical cosmic objects like stars and nebulae.
Anyway, they have a page there called The Multiwavelength Astronomical Gallery, where they have images of lots of objects in different wavelengths of the EM spectrum. Most objects look pretty when viewed in optical light, but by checking out their appearance in, say, X_rays, you can see if they have magnetic fields, or black holes, or other exotic phenomena lurking in their hearts.
And sometimes it’s just weird. What do you think this thing is?
Give up? It’s the Moon! Yes, really! It was taken by the 140 foot radio telescope in West Virginia. The red parts are brighter in radio, and represent warmer regions of the Moon. The Moon was probably a few days past full when this image was made.
That page has pictures galore of galaxies, nebulae, planets, and all sorts of beautiful and weird objects. Perusing the rest of the site is a treat as well. It’s always best to learn stuff by having fun, and you get to see some amazing images as a bonus.
So take a look. It’ll open your eyes.
October 21st, 2005 at 6:57 am
Thanks for website, Phil.
Will show it to my Astro students this spring. Also useful for Science Olympiad.
On the same vein, Jules Halpern at Columbia did a little movie of the Sun in different wavelengths and compared it to hearing Beethoven’s 9th in different frequencies. Here’s the link: http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/helfand/
October 21st, 2005 at 10:38 am
Now check out H.P. Lovecraft’s short story on the topic of limited human perception:
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/frombeyond.htm
October 21st, 2005 at 6:58 pm
Lunar BBQ spare ribs and green cheese. Nice.
October 21st, 2005 at 8:09 pm
You mentioned us! Someone finally mentioned the NRAO at Greenbanks! Finally, someone mentions my state…
Excellent pictures, all of them. Thank you!
October 22nd, 2005 at 7:43 am
Totally cool, thanks for the links!
October 22nd, 2005 at 12:20 pm
Jessica, I went to graduate school at UVa, and made a couple of trips to Greenbank for class. I have never seen the new 100 meter, though I have an invite to drop by when I’m in that area. I’d really like to see it!
October 22nd, 2005 at 1:57 pm
Is there a place where we can see pictures of Earth taken by deep space probes such as Voager, Cassini and the Mars Rovers?
It would be an interesting bench mark image for the likes of Setti.
October 22nd, 2005 at 2:46 pm
It’s not exclusively long shots — most are features of Earth from Earth orbit — but all the handful of whole-Earth images from more distant probes that I recall, seem to be among these many hundreds at the NASA Planetary Photojournal: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/targetFamily/Earth
Messenger, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Mariner 10 are represented. I think I saw the (poor) MER Rovers’ efforts.