I’ve got a question out of my own ignorance of how astronomy works: How do astronomers pick what visible colors to assign to the components of a false-color image? Are there conventions? Is it all about making the information visible, and the beauty is just a side-effect of that pragmatism, or does beauty ever come into it?

When ya coming back to ScopeOut? We miss you here in flyover country…

But point taken about the meaning of “aromatic” to a chemist. Didn’t know about that.

A molecule or functional group is desrcibed as aromatic if the electrons in its pi-bonding orbitals are delocalised.

The green glow is from PAHs, or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Again, in non-geek lingo: big molecules of stinky soot.

See, I told you space has a smell.

Hope y’all enjoy this bit of doggrel inspired by this:

Seeing the Invisible stars of GL490 :

Coldly warm the new star glows
Coccooned its light concealed
The nuclear fires stoke up to burn
With frozen grains congealed!

You cannot see its nebula
Too dark it blocks the stars
By absence you detect its presence

It gives itself away by hiding
Except in infra-red
What would we see if eyes we had
That saw in heat and cold?

These new born stars and planets round
What do they have in store?
Will there be life on worlds they birth
What possibilities might be foresaw
If we look close enough to tell
What stories lie ahead?

These planets still forming now, their suns begin to blaze
Will still young be as our earth dies, our Sun’s red giant phase!
Could we ever meet up if life starts over there?
Will they ever somehow know we’ve caught them at this stage?

- Steven C. Raine (Messier Tidy Upper here.)

PS. Yeah, I know it doesn’t always rhyme & is sort of free verse / stream of consciousness / limerick mixed style. Hope it’s still amusing /entertaining / thought-provoking / okay anyhow.

Thanks also to the astronomers and engineers operating Spitzer & the 2 Micron All-Sky Survey.

If you were to ask how much more black it could be, the answer would be none: none more black.

Poetic – but true only at visual wavelengths.

What is black in infra-red?

Makes you wonder.

Do what know how massive these stars are going to be & what their spectral types are – or will be when they hit the main-sequence? How far evolved are they and when will they join the main-sequence (dwarf) star ranks?

It is still functioning, just not at the longer IR wavelengths. See:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer-20090506.html

However, the telescope’s two shortest-wavelength detectors in its infrared array camera will continue to function perfectly. They will still pick up the glow from a range of objects: asteroids in our solar system, dusty stars, planet-forming disks, gas-giant planets and distant galaxies. In addition, Spitzer still will be able to see through the dust that permeates our galaxy and blocks visible-light views.

George

The Spitzer is out of coolant, and yet it can still take IR pictures? Wha?

I had understood that once out of frozen OJ, a telescope like the Spitzer was just a clumsy paperweight. What gives?

It’s really remarkable. We always knew that must be the case, but now we can see it.

But that’s the part of astronomy I love: you figure out something on such a deep level that you know what it MUST look like; you build a better telescope and look; and there it is!

http://herschel.esac.esa.int/Images/2009/FirstParallelMode_SPIRE_PACS.jpg

Yeah, well my star birth goes to 11!