Comments on: Three generations of Hubble cameras capture a spiral

By: Jack Hagerty

Jack Hagerty — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 04:31:56 +0000

2. John Says: “Yeah, but Webb wont be able to take that image, seeing as it wont have any blue wavelength coverage.”

True, but that’s not the purpose of the JWT. It is designed to look further back than the Hubble, and in that region (nearly) all of the visible light has red-shifted to the IR. Hence the spectrum it’s designed to look at.

- Jack

By: Chris Winter

Chris Winter — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 02:50:54 +0000

I stumbled across this in Quark Soup, which linked to the full Huffington Post story.

President Obama to appear on Mythbusters December 8.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/18/obama-on-mythbusters-discovery_n_766248.html

This is a googleplex kinds of awesome. I trust I picked a suitable thread in which to introduce it.

By: Jon Hanford

Jon Hanford — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 23:18:56 +0000

If you look closely (preferably using a large version of the pic), very few “starlike” blue clusters are to be found very close to the nucleus of this galaxy. Its fairly easy to spot the transition zone in the galaxy once this is pointed out(hopefully). I’m curious as to why this is so, noting that abundant dust clouds are to be seen crossing the smooth blue inner arms. What mechanism is responsible for the paucity of star clusters in the region immediately adjacent to the nucleus? Any ideas?

btw, the Hubble Heritage site has a page on this image that includes extra info, a short video on the making of the image and the individual B&W exposures combined to make the finished piece: http://heritage.stsci.edu/2010/36/

By: John Freeman

John Freeman — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 22:55:56 +0000

Just looked at the 2500 by 2600 pixel version. Sweet! And very very big in all senses.

By: andy

andy — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 20:16:18 +0000

I quite like this oklo.org post which includes a bit on what it would look like from a distance of roughly 300 kly from the Sombrero Galaxy.

By: Carey

Carey — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:57:08 +0000

OtherRob: I understand what you’re saying, but even Hubble pictures are taken using filters and the color balance is changed quite a bit in processing. Whether or not those images truly represent the celestial objects as they would appear if you were right there is in doubt anyway.

By: Gus Snarp

Gus Snarp — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:43:57 +0000

What I find interesting is that the reason people have heard of Hubble in the first place is because of its early problems. In fact, I would bet that if you asked people my age and older, who were not in any way astronomy buffs, about Hubble, you would find a sizable majority who believe it was a failure (that is, if they remembered it at all).

By: RickJ

RickJ — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:19:05 +0000

Oops, you mean NGC 3982. 3892 is a rather obscure barred SB0 galaxy nearly twice as distant.

Rick

By: Cindy

Cindy — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:52:54 +0000

What, no original WFPC images of that galaxy? Then it could have been 4 generations of cameras.

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:37:51 +0000

PS. See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRAS for more.

NB. D’oh! That’s “planets” not panets (whatever they might be) around Vega, Fomalhaut & Beta Pic natch. And I very nearly had that typo correction down as “plants” instead! Definitely bedtime for me now!

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:25:17 +0000

@ ^ Larry : And dust lanes and nebulae and a central supermassive black hole too!

@3. OtherRob : Agreed.

Hubble may be the first space telescope most people heard about

Mine was the IRAS infra-red space observatory in 1983 via one of Patrick Moore’s books!

I vividly recall reading about IRAS discovering dust disk suggesting possible panets around Vega and Fomalhaut and Beta Pictoris – two of which stars have now had actual exoplanets imaged orbiting them. (Although some doubt has, I gather, recently been cast on the Fomalhaut b one. Sigh.)

But then I’m an unusual individual case

The Hubble has been, without doubt, one of the most amazing, successful & beloved human creations of all time. I wish they’d boost the HST into a higher orbit and not burn it up when the Hubble’s career ends.

By: Larry

Larry — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:24:38 +0000

My god, it’s full of stars!

By: OtherRob

OtherRob — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:14:38 +0000

I know that there will be an incredible amount of data generated by the Webb telescope that will take increase our understanding of the universe in ways we probably can’t even begin to imagine. But I must say I am a little disappointed that it won’t take visible-light pictures. I just love those images that show what we would see if we were there.

By: John

John — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 15:40:24 +0000

Yeah, but Webb wont be able to take that image, seeing as it wont have any blue wavelength coverage.

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 15:35:19 +0000

Superluminous (beyond just brilliant) image!

I literally gasped then whistled on seeing that. Jaw-dropping.

Thankyou.