Comments on: Unwind with some spirals

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 14:46:39 +0000

Another awesome videoclip on Youtube here :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-naywvPCHs&feature=fvst

starting with a stellar and nebular journey and featuring a spiral at the 2 min. 15-20ish seconds mark then ending in “death from the skies” in a *very* major way!

By: Astronews Daily Etx. Edition (2455498)

Astronews Daily Etx. Edition (2455498) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 12:14:33 +0000

[...] Unwind with some spirals – A very important aspect of astronomy often overlooked is how much our eyes don’t tell us. We see a very limited range of the spectrum of light emitted by astronomical objects, and many times it’s what we don’t see that tells us what’s going on. -Phil Plait – Bad Astronomy [...]

By: Astronomovie

Astronomovie — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 09:42:06 +0000

@24 and others – Yep, I’d love to see radio (HI) maps of these galaxies as well. I have no clear opinion about the colour, red/orange will do, but it could be something underlying and diffuse because the HI is far more extended than the other wavelengths. I haven’t seen data or so, but I would expect that the spatial size of these images has to be blown up by a few factors to cover everything. Now that would really show how extended a galaxy is and what the eye cannot see

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 07:55:42 +0000

@19. Grand Lunar Says:

Didn’t the open of Doctor Who with Sylvester McCoy feature a spiral?

Yup. Looks like the TARDIS causes a fair bit of gravitational or spacetime disruption of the galactic structure too!

Watch here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJeM2buWAw8 for nostalgia fix.

@16. Oli & # 20. J. Major : Thanks. Now it makes sense. Whoah, maa-aan that dude was tripping!

Nice double rainbow though!

By: Yeebok

Yeebok — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 06:32:41 +0000

@8,20 / J Major – the only way I can think of to describe it to you is kinda like this.
Imagine the whole EM spectrum from micro to gamma or whatever the entire spectrum is as a rainbow. Then, of the entire rainbow what is normally “visible light” would be a small band – perhaps just the greens. Radio might be just orange, X/Gamma rays would be blue and violet.
Of course that’s overly simplified, but I would imagine if we could see infra red, it’d be a ‘negative red’ colour (as opposed to white light with the red removed, which is cyan – #00FFFF))

I wonder what colour talkback radio would be if we can see it .. I am hoping a disturbing brown for some reason..

By: Jamey

Jamey — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 20:55:32 +0000

I’d like to see an image with radio freqs done in red, microwave in orange, infrared in yellow, visible in green, UV in blue, and X-ray in purple… I think it would be fascinating to see an image combined all the way across the EM spectrum, compressing the whole spectrum down to the visible light range.

By: Jess Tauber

Jess Tauber — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 20:00:18 +0000

I’m still waiting for the development of telescopes that operate by concentrating skotons, the anti-energy equivalent of photons. Then we’ll be able to directly image dark matter. Too late for this Thanksgiving holiday, however, where millions of Americans will ingest thousands of tons of dark matter from beakless alien avians. The Gobble Telescope!

By: Oli

Oli — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 19:34:49 +0000

@20. J. Major: Hmm, I prefer Schmoyoho’s song.
I’d love to look up to the sky and see everything in X-rays or gamma-rays. If humans were unable to see visible light (now that’s a bit of a paradox) but only gammarays and X-rays, what would we think about the universe? We’d hardly see stars, mostly just quasars, pulsars and the likes. Would we call stars ‘pre-pulsars’?
When people say that the truth is always stranger than fantasy, they are right, because we are unable to imagine some of these things. We just lack the ability to do so – just like how we can’t imagine how well dogs smell (that sounds rather strange).

So basically our lives are terrible.
Why? Because the rent is too damn high. I would sooo vote for that party if I lived in NY (=

By: J. Major

J. Major — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:51:52 +0000

@16. Oli: personally I prefer this version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g0yZDMBXiE

@12. kuhnigget: some bugs and critters can see in UV wavelengths, and other things can “see” infrared (in terms of heat detection….I picture something akin to Predator-Vision™), so apparently nature has tried out some different types of eyes than ours. Unless ALL THE INSECTS ARE INSANE…..oooh, creepy thought. But I guess it would be pretty much a downer to suddenly lose the ability to see what you never even knew you were missing.

I suppose the world would be a pretty bright place if we could see in radio.

By: Grand Lunar

Grand Lunar — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:51:40 +0000

Didn’t the open of Doctor Who with Sylvester McCoy feature a spiral?

I find those barred spirals to be weird looking, what with that thick center and the arms eminating from them.
Galaxies sure do have a sublime beauty to them.

BTW Phil, you never told us you made an appearence on Head Rush!
That surprised me. What else are you hiding from us?