Bigger than a really big thing

[666_pack]

Superb vistas from reborn Hubble

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8247245.stm

These images form the hubble telescope really are awesome!

[RedLeader]

The Hubble Space Telescope really is awesome. However, does everyone know that the images you see are totally retouched? Hubble only 'sees' in greyscale so all the colour is added later. I'm not even sure that the colours that they use are in any way a reflection of what you might see - I think the different colours are only used for distinction and effect.

Not sure how I feel about that!

[Wolf_Larson]

It looks to me, the gas from the lords ass. 

[666_pack]

It looks to me, the gas from the lords ass. 

there's a theory that's bound to suit everyone. The universe is nothing more than a fart in celestial sleeping bag.

I like the cut of your jib.

[Wolf_Larson]

The universe is nothing more than a fart in celestial sleeping bag.   

Would not like to be in that universe   

jib  

[666_pack]

                                                       



This is the entire celestial sphere as seen from the best vantage points on Earth. The 800-million pixel image comes from the European Southern Observatory's GigaGalaxyZoom project. The Milky Way, viewed edge-on, shows its central bulge and both dark and glowing nebulae - birthplaces of new stars.

[Wolf_Larson]

So thats where i was born. 

[Hunter]

                                                       



This is the entire celestial sphere as seen from the best vantage points on Earth. The 800-million pixel image comes from the European Southern Observatory's GigaGalaxyZoom project. The Milky Way, viewed edge-on, shows its central bulge and both dark and glowing nebulae - birthplaces of new stars.

Should we start calling you Sir Patrick Moore LOL

[RedLeader]

Is making me want to dig out the telescope for another bash at astronomy.

[666_pack]

                     




This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the colorful "last hurrah" of a star like our Sun. The star is ending its life by casting off its outer layers of gas, which formed a cocoon around the star's remaining core. Ultraviolet light from the dying star then makes the material glow. The burned-out star, called a white dwarf, appears as a white dot in the center. Our Milky Way Galaxy is littered with these stellar relics, called planetary nebulae. Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 captured this image of planetary nebula NGC 2440 on Feb. 6,

[Wolf_Larson]

THE GREAT JACK LONDON QUOTE COMES TO MIND.

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark would burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

[666_pack]

THE GREAT JACK LONDON QOUTE CAMES TO MIND.

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark would burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

Thats my favorite qoute.

[666_pack]

                                                   


This composite color infrared image of the center of our Milky Way galaxy reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in complex structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around the central 300 light-years. This sweeping panorama is the sharpest infrared picture ever made of the Galactic core. It offers a nearby laboratory for how massive stars form and influence their environment in the often violent nuclear regions of other galaxies.

This view combines the sharp imaging of the Hubble Space Telescope's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) with color imagery from a previous Spitzer Space Telescope survey done with its Infrared Astronomy Camera (IRAC). The Galactic core is obscured in visible light by intervening dust clouds, but infrared light penetrates the dust.

The spatial resolution of the NICMOS image corresponds to 0.025 light-years at the distance of the Galactic core of 26,000 light-years. Hubble reveals details in objects as small as 20 times the size of our own solar system.

The NICMOS mosaic image represents the largest piece of sky ever mapped for one NICMOS observing program. It was combined with a full-color Spitzer image to yield a color composite of the nuclear region. The picture measures 300 x 115 light-years. Outside the boundary of the NICMOS survey, the IRAC exposures (which are 1/10th as sharp) can be seen at wavelengths of 3.6 microns (shown as blue), 4.5 microns (shown as green), 5.8 microns (shown as orange), and 8.0 microns (shown as red).

The new NICMOS data show the glow from ionized hydrogen gas as well as a multitude of stars. Hubble reveals an important population of stars with strong stellar winds, signified by excess emission from ionized gas at one infrared wavelength (1.87 microns) compared to another slightly different wavelength (1.90 microns).

NICMOS shows a large number of these massive stars distributed throughout the region. A new finding is that astronomers now see that the massive stars are not confined to one of the three known clusters of massive stars in the Galactic Center, known as the Central cluster, the Arches cluster, and the Quintuplet cluster. These three clusters are easily seen as tight concentrations of bright, massive stars in the NICMOS image. The distributed stars may have formed in isolation, or they may have originated in clusters that have been disrupted by strong gravitational tidal forces.

The winds and radiation from these stars form the complex structures seen in the core, and in some cases, they may be triggering new generations of stars. At upper left, large arcs of ionized gas are resolved into arrays of intriguingly organized linear filaments indicating perhaps a critical role of the influence of locally strong magnetic fields.

The lower left region shows pillars of gas sculpted by winds from hot massive stars in the Quintuplet cluster. At the center of the image, ionized gas surrounding the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy is confined to a bright spiral embedded within a circum-nuclear dusty inner-tube-shaped torus.

The NICMOS mosaic required 144 Hubble orbits to make 2,304 science exposures. It was taken between February 22 and June 5, 2008.

[666_pack]

                                 




                                       


December 1, 2005: The Crab Nebula is a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star's supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers recorded this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, as did, almost certainly, Native Americans. This composite image was assembled from 24 individual exposures taken with the NASA Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in October 1999, January 2000, and December 2000. It is one of the largest images taken by Hubble and is the highest resolution image ever made of the entire Crab Nebula.

[Wolf_Larson]

Stars go out with a big bang, just like are stars here on earth. IE, G.Best