Slashdot Mirror

Again - those are photos of nearby objects - they don't need long exposures. Neptune is practically right next door, and even NGC 6388 is still within the Milky Way (and they don't share a Hubble photo of that for comparison - here's one that seems to show far more detail: https://www.spacetelescope.org... )

So I had to click around awhile, but here's the actual paper:

http://www.spacetelescope.org/...

For some of us, it makes a huge difference if we're reading the actual paper, or trying to understand the watered-down version on a click-bait site.

Maps of the distribution of dark matter have been produced using weak gravitational lensing, e.g. in the COSMOS survey.

http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic0701/
http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~rjm/cosmos/
http://www.space.com/14176-dark-matter-biggest-map-unveiled.html

http://www.spacetelescope.org/...

hey slashdot editors, if you are reporting about space and/or science, stick with links to websites dedicated to that topic!

I don't have the article in the mail yet, but I'm guessing that's new. At the very least, Weakly Interacting is now Really Weakly Interacting.

Here you go.

From my perspective, it hardly changes a thing (it lowers the cross section / mass constraint a little, but not even an order of magnitude). But, then, I'm not a WIMP guy.

http://www.spacetelescope.org/...
Are those stars or just noise? It's really hard to tell.

There's lots of cameras deployed without microphones. Also pretty sure sound doesn't make it to geosynchronous orbit strata of the atmosphere...

You're implying we could read lips from GEO. Good luck with that. Even if the Hubble Space Telescope (which is at low earth orbit, not geosynchronous) were pointed at the earth, the best resolution you could manage would be about 30 cm.

http://www.spacetelescope.org/...
https://what-if.xkcd.com/32/

In theory it might be possible to read lips at GEO, but you'd need a HUGE telescope, or smaller binocular-configured telescopes with a wide-enough baseline, to get the job done.

And nitpick: there's really no "strata of the atmosphere" at GEO. Contributions there from the Earth's atmosphere are miniscule. It's pretty much plasma and magnetosphere from a few hundred km altitude on upwards.

Whoosh!

http://www.spacetelescope.org/...

Here's a better article from ESA which also links to the arXiv copy of the paper and an actual image of the galaxy (full size JPEG). (The image at the beginning of TFA is just an illustration, by the way.)

Here's a better article from ESA which also links to the arXiv copy of the paper and an actual image of the galaxy (full size JPEG). (The image at the beginning of TFA is just an illustration, by the way.)

Here's a better article from ESA which also links to the arXiv copy of the paper and an actual image of the galaxy (full size JPEG). (The image at the beginning of TFA is just an illustration, by the way.)

Correct paper: http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/science_papers/heic1316a.pdf

I realise that the title of this article was carried over from the CBC article, but could we at least try to remember that it's astronomers that discover things like this high-redshift galaxy, not an administration like NASA in isolation? I don't mean to diminish the absolutely central role played by NASA in both Hubble and Spitzer, of course, but at the same time, a whole range of people, institutions, and organisations come together to make scientific discoveries like this possible, and I think it's important that we recognise that science is often a highly collaborative and international endeavour.

For example, there are 23 astronomers who co-authored the paper on this galaxy: 11 are from US institutions, 11 from European institutions, and 1 from a Chinese one. Note, I didn't say that they were (necessarily) American, European, and Chinese: in the list of co-authors, there are at least some Europeans working in the US and vice versa.

Also, the Hubble Space Telescope is a collaboration between NASA and ESA, the European Space Agency, albeit with NASA in this instance contributing the majority. There are other space missions including Herschel and Planck which are led by ESA, but in which NASA plays a minority role. Many space missions are collaborative in this way, in essence underpinning the mix of US-based, Europe-based, and other international astronomers who've written this paper.

In more detail, it can get even more complicated when you realise that NASA, ESA, and other space agencies themselves employ astronomers and other space scientists, so in that sense, discoveries can be made by those organisations too.

Speaking of which, it might have been more appropriate to give the links to the original US and European press releases from the Space Telescope Science Institute, NASA, and ESA to get the full story.

Anyway, despite the (important, I believe) pedantry, this is is an interesting discovery :-)

The rust is annoying though... Because they're compressing 4 wavelengths into 3 wavelengths. An image with only the RGB would look nicer. They could store the 4th IR channel as alpha channel...

No matter which way you "look" at something you are either compressing or ignoring some quality of light. The "art" of astrophotography is therefore about how much information you intend to leave out and how much you squeeze into the narrow bands of light we humans can perceive. If you are not happy with the rendering, you might be able to source the uncompressed scientific data -- which will still only ever contain partial-information due to optical, CCD and other limitations -- and render it yourself... Assuming Roskosmos make their equivalent of FITS data available to the public like NASA does.

http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1116a/

ESA page with the full-size image.

Paper [pdf] by Mark Morris, Raghvendra Sahai, Keith Matthews, Judy Cheng, Jessica Lu, Mark Claussen and Carmen Sanchez-Contreras.

Abstract. [some formatting may be lost] The extreme carbon star, AFGL 3068, is losing mass at a rate in excess of 104 M yr1 , and has so far been detected only in the infrared because it is hidden by a thick dust photosphere having a color temperature of 300K. Using the ACS camera on HST, we have imaged AFGL 3068 with broad-band lters at 0.6 and 0.8 m and nd a thin, apparently continuous spiral arc winding 4 or 5 times around the location of the star, from angular radii of 2 to 10 arcsec. We interpret this as the projection of nested spiral shells such as were predicted to occur when the mass-losing star is a member of a binary system. In this case, the illumination is presumably provided by ambient galactic starlight. Subsequent near-IR observations with the NIRC2 camera on the Keck II telescope using adaptive optics reveal that AFGL 3068 has two components separated by 0.11 arcsec, or 109 AU at a distance of 1 kpc. One very red component is presumably the mass-losing carbon star, while the other component is apparently a much bluer companion. Assuming each component has mass M(M ), and ignoring the projection of the separation vector, we nd the binary period to be 810 M0.5 yrs, strikingly comparable to the 710-yr separation of the shells obtained from the known outow velocity of 14.7 km s1 .

ESA page with the full-size image.

Paper [pdf] by Mark Morris, Raghvendra Sahai, Keith Matthews, Judy Cheng, Jessica Lu, Mark Claussen and Carmen Sanchez-Contreras.

Abstract. [some formatting may be lost] The extreme carbon star, AFGL 3068, is losing mass at a rate in excess of 104 M yr1 , and has so far been detected only in the infrared because it is hidden by a thick dust photosphere having a color temperature of 300K. Using the ACS camera on HST, we have imaged AFGL 3068 with broad-band lters at 0.6 and 0.8 m and nd a thin, apparently continuous spiral arc winding 4 or 5 times around the location of the star, from angular radii of 2 to 10 arcsec. We interpret this as the projection of nested spiral shells such as were predicted to occur when the mass-losing star is a member of a binary system. In this case, the illumination is presumably provided by ambient galactic starlight. Subsequent near-IR observations with the NIRC2 camera on the Keck II telescope using adaptive optics reveal that AFGL 3068 has two components separated by 0.11 arcsec, or 109 AU at a distance of 1 kpc. One very red component is presumably the mass-losing carbon star, while the other component is apparently a much bluer companion. Assuming each component has mass M(M ), and ignoring the projection of the separation vector, we nd the binary period to be 810 M0.5 yrs, strikingly comparable to the 710-yr separation of the shells obtained from the known outow velocity of 14.7 km s1 .

The article dated "March 26, 2010":
http://news.discovery.com/space/hubble-3d-map-universe-dark-matter.html
has a source dated 25-Mar-2010::
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic1005.html
with this quote which explains everything:

A new study led by European scientists presents the most comprehensive analysis of data from the most ambitious survey ever undertaken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. These researchers have, for the first time ever, used Hubble data to probe the effects of the natural gravitational "weak lenses" in space and characterise the expansion of the Universe.

The data was old, the analysis and imaging is new.

The 'Links' at the bottom include the new paper, and the old study. The old press release dated "7-errNoSuchMonth-2007":
"News Release heic0701 - First 3D map of the Universe's Dark Matter scaffolding"
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0701.html

Is the one described your original article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6235751.stm

The article dated "March 26, 2010":
http://news.discovery.com/space/hubble-3d-map-universe-dark-matter.html
has a source dated 25-Mar-2010::
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic1005.html
with this quote which explains everything:

A new study led by European scientists presents the most comprehensive analysis of data from the most ambitious survey ever undertaken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. These researchers have, for the first time ever, used Hubble data to probe the effects of the natural gravitational "weak lenses" in space and characterise the expansion of the Universe.

The data was old, the analysis and imaging is new.

The 'Links' at the bottom include the new paper, and the old study. The old press release dated "7-errNoSuchMonth-2007":
"News Release heic0701 - First 3D map of the Universe's Dark Matter scaffolding"
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0701.html

Is the one described your original article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6235751.stm

You are mistaken. Parallax only works for nearby objects (basically the nearest stars).

Here's how it was done:
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic1005.html

Also look at each of the descriptions on the image links on the right hand side.

And a little more about how they did it:

http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/html/heic1005c.html

http://www.spacetelescope.org/goodies/printlayouts/html/heic1005.html

...but I fail to see the 3D that was promised by TFA.

Yeah sadly it's the data that's 3D, not the presentation. They located the dark matter in three dimensions, the 3rd being distance according to red shift which is how it's colored. I can see how it's hard to find the explanation, too, what with them breaking up the story every couple paragraphs with a giant bold link to something else. I thought those were different news items at first!

Bad presentation in the article aside, this is pretty amazing work. What a phenomenal instrument we have in Hubble.

The article on the the Hubble site, while similarly lacking a good explanation for the image, actually talks about dark energy more than dark matter. Apparently this data also indicates a universe expanding outward from every point, corroborating that theory, along with some GR experimental validation as well. Not bad for a days work.

Although it isn't actually looking at the objects with your own telescope, all of the data that the Hubble Space Telescope creates is free to the public. To use the data you will need a copy of Adobe Photoshop, but once you have that it can be great fun to create the same sort of images you see from the Hubble Heritage site. To use the data (that you get in fits format) in Photoshop, you need to download the "Fits Liberator" from the http://www.spacetelescope.org/ site (check the projects tab). You can then get the data from http://archive.stsci.edu/hst/search.php (you will have to create an account).

Shock and amaze the AMERICAN page for Hubble uses units most familiar to American readers.

If you would prefer you could read its companion page the EUROPEAN page for hubble:

http://www.spacetelescope.org/

I find this concept really interesting and confusing at the same time. Consider that within plasma laboratories, we can observe certain fundamental morphologies that naturally result from the existence of charge density. Plasmas naturally form double layers, which tend to protect a plasma's charge. The double layer leads to the formation of plasma filaments. We see within the laboratory that plasma filaments tend to exhibit long-range attraction and short-range repulsion with one another. This causes the filaments to twist around one another like a braided rope. Within the plasma laboratory, we observe these complex twisted transfer charged particles very efficiently. They are called Birkeland Currents.

We see these braided filament plasma structures in space too, like in the Cygnus Loop ...

http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/hd1080p_screen/heic0712g.mp4

http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2007/arch07/070103cygnusloop.htm

Braided ropelike plasma structures are the fingerprints of electromagnetic activity. When you see plasma behaving this way, you need to make sure that you're not trying to use fluids-based equations to understand/model it.

It's interesting that the same thing can be done with respect to radio waves. I'm actually a little bit confused as to why this works for radio waves. When Birkeland Currents do this, they require the existence of a plasma medium, and the structures do their thing in the lab because of the existence of the ionization. The plasma both responds to magnetic fields and creates its own due to the right-hand rule. But these guys seem to be saying that they can create these structures within the Earth's atmosphere in the absence of a plasma medium (?). With Birkeland Currents, the collimation occurs because the flow of charged particles generates a magnetic field.

I'm not getting something. Any plasma physicists out there??? Is HAARP creating an ionized pathway for the signal through the atmosphere?

There have been discoveries of dark matter, and they are at least understandable by lay people like myself. Here is a video of one.

Another article on this double ring find.

You even have to subtract about 500 million dollars from the 6,5 billion, as that is the contribution of the ESA to the mission. (See FAQ item 10 (that page also must have been made in space, because who on Earth would sort a FAQ in reverse order and not even put anchors to the items on it)). So about $20 for each in the US and below $1 for us Europeans, not that it makes a difference and I fully agree with you.

Yes this is very sad but even without ACS Hubble still has WFP2 and NICMOS so its entirely worth servicing it because it can still do bleeding edge science. I don't think there is much hope for servicing ACS. Most of the large ground based telescopes come equipped with atmospheric dispersion correctors (two fancy counter-rotating prisms) and Shack-Hartmann sensors and these along with the larger primary make up a lot of the difference for some science purposes, though ACS will be sorely missed and soon. HST proposals were due recently so they'll probably extend the call for proposals by a few weeks but there will be a lot of unhappy folks who will have to go back to the drawing board so to speak and start from scratch.

If you still want pretty pictures for your desktop - this is not really the point but its astronomy for the soul which is very important - then theres a fairly large collection of ACS images http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/frees earch/acs/viewall/1 and you can get some pretty stunning images from the ground with relatively small telescopes - some of the bigger names in astrophotography like Robert Gendler, Neil Fleming, Ron Wodawski do some stunning stuff.

Check out http://www.spacetelescope.org/ to see some of what the ESA does. They have lots of images from the Hubble and other cool stuff on their site (although I have to admit I am kind of prejudiced about the ESA as I do some side work on image processing for them).

There's this 15th anniversary documentary & book. It is really good, although a bit light on designing and engineering the HST. But the pictures are nice!

450 megabytes.

Thats astronomical!

They do actually have a zoomable version for folks who don't want or need the entire thing. Thats available Here

This reminds me of this issue:

From Hubble Space Telescope pictures to the vocabulary used to describe the stars, astronomers and the media are coloring our universe, and they've been doing it for decades. While not intended to deceive, the efforts can range from the overly subjective to the absurd.

Slate explains that the raw images from space telescopes are colored with Photoshop before they are released to the public. The 'Pillars of Creation' shows the difference that color makes. You can download the free Photoshop plug-in to color your own images.

parent suggested waiting until hubble falls enough to be relatively close to ISS's orbit. (by relatively i mean close enough to transfer to ISS orbit and dock with ISS in the event of trouble)

I don't think this is possible even if they were at the same level orbit.
Hubble's inclination is about as low as you can get (launching from kennedy that is), about 28.5 degrees. ISS's orbit was optimized for revinue (passing over as many countries as possible so as to get funding) and is about 51.6 degrees.

http://www.spacetelescope.org/about/general/orbit. html
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast01dec_1 .htm

The delta-V required for an inclination change is much greater than that required for a transfer (from high low orbit).

You can download and view/edit/make pretty pictures with the raw data from the Hubble yourself if you want (Photoshop 7.0 at least required). Go to the stsci archive and check the "HST: ASC" box, and in the target box enter "V838-MON". Follow the directions from the search page to get the data (you will need to register with the mast association). Then, go here (the European homepage for the Hubble) and download the necessary files. When you have the raw data, you can process it to your heart's content. To check out some of the possible images that can be created, go to my fits images page. Most of the really nice Hubble shots come from the HST WFPC2, so use that to search for other things (like M16).

Actually, lad, please check your own facts before telling someone else off... Hubble is regularly used to view 'close by' objects.

Enjoy this picture gallery from ESA:

http://www.spacetelescope.org/bin/images.pl?viewty pe=&searchtype=topic&string=solar+system&from=33

~MRD.

... or try the newly-launched spacetelescope.org. It has all images ever released to the public, plus videos, wallpapers and background information.

The Europeans and Canadians already do support it (ESA supports Hubble to about 15% of it anual opperating budget). However none of them own it, nor can they go and fix it.

And none of them pony up for the $500 million shuttle launches. That falls fully on NASA. Is kind of like being a teenager and having your parents not give you the keys to the car to go on a date on Saturday night. Your not getting very far without them.

many are still-running Macintoshes from 10 years ago or more. There are no PC compatibles from that long ago around.

oh, really?

The lifetime of the 486 is expected to exceed the 10 years Hubble itself is expected to be in operation. Despite being bombarded by cosmic and solar radiation constantly and being exposed to extreme temperatures.

I've never seen a Mac withstand that, and last 10 years.