You are part of the new religion, -science- men with nice placks on their wall tell you something and you bet your soul on it…

I hope you search and find the truth…

Love in Christ ”

Well, Scott, isn’t it a pity that not only is Darwin’s Black Box wrong in every important respect, but that its author, Michael Behe, actually lies in his follow-up book The Edge of Evolution.

Behe claimed that HIV has not evolved any new biochemical interactions. A graduate student, who blogs under the name ERV and who works on virus biochemistry, called him out, pointing out at least two biochemical interactions that have evolved in some strains of HIV but not others. Behe’s response was both rude and irrelevant, completely ignoring ERV’s substantive point that refuted Behe’s claim.

Is Behe the person you wish to regard as an authority? Really?

Re lumpy atmosphere or missing stars, anyone who follows the link Phil gives to the source page of the Earth and Moon photo will see in the HiRISE Operations Center’s caption that the image was processed to some extent. In this case a good thing – for reasons given there.

Processing, as likely all readers here know of course, is actually often essential to obtain a meaningful image. (Think of infrared images of deep space objects: should they be left in infra-red? Well, sure if someone’s eyes can see infrared, but then they’d be of interest to medicine for at least one reason, ha.)

As for missing stars, if that were to bother anyone, a few unshown stars are indeed in the background vicinity of the Earth and Moon HiRISE image.

But, at least per my planetarium program, Earth from Mars was roughly at, shall we say, a noticeably-bright magnitude of -3.05, our Moon at a slightly fainter 1.01 (original magnitude which the linked website says they adjusted in processing). However, the brightest nearby star would be TYC6842-1271-1 at a much fainter magnitude 9.75. (Remember that scale is not linear, so “much fainter” is correct.)

The HiRISE people could have also processed this faint star to appear, to keep some potential skeptics happy, but there are only two or three more stars at even fainter magnitudes in the photo’s area, and whatever else is back there is so much fainter even my planetarium program doesn’t bother listing them. Probably a few hundred super-super-faint galaxies? (But…if you know and like Malin’s astrophotowork well then maybe the unshown background stuff does matter…) Anyway, anyone really wanting the image processed even further to show the stars might be rather like listening to a recording of wonderful heavy surf crashing against a rocky shore, and criticizing it for not including the sound of some tiny twig falling inland in a thick forest half a kilometer back from the shore. (Think Long Beach, Vancouver Island, or Agate Beach on Haida Gwai, which BTW is a memorable verrry dark-sky observing site.) But for most of us I suspect that the sound of waves and few faint seagull calls would likely portray the heart of the location very sufficiently, likewise seeing the Earth and Moon without stars, as defectiverobot indicated March 3rd, presents a beauty not requiring anything more. (Unless of course someone is actually from unshown star TYC6842-1271-1!)

At our science centre where the public also get weekly free telescope viewing I give very informal talks to adults and kids, including Keynote (powerpoint-on-Mac) images. Processed images too! (Will include the HiRISE EArth and Moon next time.) There, even the kids realize it is okay, even necessary, for astronomers to process images from Hubble etc into colourful deep space objects. They see details revealed in diverse ways that set them to wondering and learning. They don’t waste time bad-logic-ing and conspiricizing if there’s such a word. Some even begin to grasp why, for example, many astronomers use FITS files rather than the far more limited jpgs and tiffs the public are more familiar with. By processing images several different ways from data-thick originals, the very same source images can reveal much useful diverse info, as well inspire future scientists among those youngsters who have the good fortune (or blessing, your choice) of living in a remarkable time of wonder and discovery.

[[looking too close to the universe you cant see God’s handywork eh!.
READ DARWIN’ BLACK BOX… if you still believe everything including yourself is a mistake YOU’RE the one ignoring the facts. ]]

Behe’s “Darwins’ Black Box” had a number of problems with it. Basically, he said that a number of biological structures were “irreducibly complex” that really weren’t. The mistakes vitiated his whole thesis.

[[You are part of the new religion, -science- men with nice placks on their wall tell you something and you bet your soul on it… ]]

Placques. And the whole point of science is to actually find out how something works, not to depend on authority figures to tell you about it.

[[I hope you search and find the truth…]]

Agreed, and in your and my case we have. But please don’t tie your evangelism to your views about creationism or science! I know from personal experience that creationism is a big stumbling block for a lot of non-believers. Right or wrong, evolution is part of what they’ve believed since they were kids, and attacking it makes them think everything you’re saying is wrong and doesn’t need to be listened to. I really think creationism has turned more people away from Christ than it has led to Him.

You are part of the new religion, -science- men with nice placks on their wall tell you something and you bet your soul on it…

I hope you search and find the truth…

Love in Christ

Scott

1. There now exists “The BA effect” whereby even the slightest mention by Phil Plait or linking to him will gain you instant notoriety.

Or

2. Creationists are digging up Phil’s stories in an effort to crash his server’s and prevent him from delivering a healthy dose of reality to those who need it most.

Either way, great job Phil

Calli Arcale, thanks for those. I really like the THEMIS one. That one shows the Moon and Earth at approximately max separation (perpendicular view). I’m particularly interested in scale presentations of the Solar System, things that show the bodies and distances between them at the same scale. That one is excellent.

We can’t really do deep sky observing with HiRISE, because our CCD array works in a “push broom” fashion – meaning that we can’t do point-and-shoot images. Instead, to get an area of sky, we actually have to roll the entire spacecraft in such a way to scan an area of sky across our telescope’s focal plane. This effectively limits how deep in magnitude that we can go.

We have taken some star fields for calibration work, but they haven’t gone very deep in magnitude since we can’t do the long exposures that frame cameras do. So deep-sky observing is almost completely out of the question. In addition, our targeting specialists would probably revolt if we tried to regularly image non-Mars targets! Generating the special command sequences needed for MRO to target objects off-planet are difficult, time consuming, and prone to error.

It’s humbling to look at them, but in a breathtaking, awe-inspiring way. Plus of course it’s fun to say “I can see my house from here!” I know, my house is too small to show, but somehow it makes the output of these probes so much more *real*, seeing them take pictures of our home. It’s a bit like playing around with Google Maps to look around your hometown. It might seem frivolous, but there’s something almost magical about the whole thing. Sagan and his cohorts had to fight to get the Solar System self-portrait made, even though there was really no competition for Voyager 1′s cameras, way out there in the hinterlands of the solar system, precisely because it seems somehow frivolous to use this expensive spacecraft designed to study other worlds to take a look at our own. Especially since that look is so inferior in quality to what you can get from closer spacecraft. But there is a magic to these pictures that can’t be quantified in terms of scientific or financial return. I think the best use of these pictures is to grab the public’s attention. And they *work*.

Callie Arcale, great post, thanks for the links to those great images.

Another picture I love is of the Sun from Mars’ surface. These images from the off-the-Earth perspective are definitely humbling (another Sagan comment: being an astronomer is a character building endeavor).

As Nigel said, and the famous Cassini image shows, from such distances we look like what we see in our sky. Another twinkle in a vast sea of darkness. So cool.

@Decius: I bow to your insult slinging prowess

@BA: Could I please please please have the IP address (stress on singular) for Astronomer, Mark, xylos and Craig? I promise I’ll play nice… enough

Remember that Earth is an inferior planet as viewed from Mars. You would only ever see Earth as a morning star or evening star (a bit like seeing Venus from Earth), never during full night.