Slashdot Mirror

Hope it has auroras like Jupiters.

I love these sort of images...

This is a cool animated gif showing the expansion of the nebula, and here are some nice hubble images.

Doug

I just wanted to point out that this picture, and many other cool ones, are brought to you by the Hubble Heritage project. The point of this project is to create an archive of both beautiful and scientifically useful pictures of things while Hubble still works.

They have done some cool stuff and I am glad that they are doing it (even if does mean a smaller chance my own proposals will get approved).

• The guys behind the discovery
• Their information on this project
• A good picture and some good background from Ast. Pic. o' Day

• The guys behind the discovery
• Their information on this project
• A good picture and some good background from Ast. Pic. o' Day

Kinda reminds me of my first astronomy class. I hadn't even made it to my freshman year of high school and I had 4 credits of Astronomy from the local community college.

Many people have given good advice above. I'll mainly just second their comments. The order I'd proceed in is.

First item, a good beginners star atlas.

Second item, warm clothing.

Third item, many nights in the country just learning the stars and constelations.

After that go and get a good pair of binoculars or a good telescope.

Last, but not least. As your doughter is so young, you will need to be there as a source of infromation. You'll need to learn alot to help guide her in the early years.

Now for some Links. The first two have good beginners information. Some of the links below may be dead. I just quick cut and pasted them from the astronomy section of my Interesting Places page.

• Astronomy Mag. (www.astronomy.com/home.asp).
• Sky & Telescope Mag. (www.skypub.com).
• Minnesota Astronomical Society (MAS) (www.mnastro.org).
• The Telescope Shoppe (www.telescopeshop.com), 3402 Federal Dr., Eagan, MN, 651-688-7335. Yes this is a local Twin Cities telescope shop. They have a map on their site showing where they are. They are tucked in the lower level along the side of the strip mall they are in. The store is small and easy to miss. If your at the corner of Yankee Doodle RD and Federal Dr., park in the lot to the south east. They are a short stones throw from the intersection.
• Telescope making links
• • Many good links on making AltAz mounts (zebu.uoregon.edu/~mbartels/altaz/altaz.html).
  • ATM's resource List (www.freenet.tlh.fl.us/~blombard).
• Astronomy-Mall.com (www.astronomy-mall.com/Astronomy-Mall).
• Stellafane (www.stellafane.com).
• Terrestrial Planet Finder (tpf.jpl.nasa.gov).
• Many Images of the moon (www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/pxmoon.html) .
• Solar Views (www.solarviews.com).
• Planetary Image Atlas (www-pdsimage.JPL.NASA.GOV/PDS/public/Atlas).
• Hubble Space Telescope Archive (oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pictures.html).
• Hummble Site (hubble.stsci.edu).
• StarStuff (www.starstuff.org).
• SpaceRef (www.spaceref.com), Your space refference.
• Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive (antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html).
• SkyView (skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov) virtual observatory.
• 2MASS (www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/) and (pegasus.astro.umass.edu/GradProg/2mass.html) Two Micron All Sky Survey.
• Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment (LASCO) (http://lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil/lasco.html).
• AAVSO Network to Search for Optical Counterparts of Gamma-Ray Bursts (www.aavso.org/grb.stm).
• High Altitude Observatory (www.hao.ucar.edu).
• Asteroid Comet Impact Hazards (impact.arc.nasa.gov).
• • Unusual Minor Planets (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Unusual.html).
  • Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/PHACloseApp.html).& nbsp; Of particular interest to me are LB16 and AN10 which will pass at a distance closer than the moon's orbit. LB16 currently only has one opposition charted so it's predicted orbit will likely change as new data comes in. It's expected to swing by in 2004. In 2027 AN10 will visit earth. It's orbit is calculated with three oppositions meaning it't much more likely to really showup ontime and in place. With further data LB16 could either get closer or farther away. When AN10's orbit was first predicted (only one opposition at the time) it's error envelope included earth. With further data it was found to just pass within the moon's orbit and miss the earth.
  • Forthcoming Close Approaches To The Earth (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/CloseApp.html).&nbs p; This is the document to look at when you want to know who will visit next and how far away. It has all close approaches to 0.2 AU away from earth or within 20% of the distance of between the sun and earth. On Sep 19th, 2000 we will have a visiter at 0.0477 AU and on Oct 31st anotehr one will pass at 0.07386 AU. LB16 and AN10 are expected to pass at around 0.25% of the distance between the sun and earth.
• Mars Global Surveyor (mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/index.html).
• Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) (ltpwww.gsfc.nasa.gov/tharsis/mola.html). There are full data on the shape of Mars including 1 degree and .5 degree elevation data sets.
• Planetary photojournal by JPL (photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov).
• NASA's Origins Program (origins.jpl.nasa.gov).

Kinda reminds me of my first astronomy class. I hadn't even made it to my freshman year of high school and I had 4 credits of Astronomy from the local community college.

Many people have given good advice above. I'll mainly just second their comments. The order I'd proceed in is.

First item, a good beginners star atlas.

Second item, warm clothing.

Third item, many nights in the country just learning the stars and constelations.

After that go and get a good pair of binoculars or a good telescope.

Last, but not least. As your doughter is so young, you will need to be there as a source of infromation. You'll need to learn alot to help guide her in the early years.

Now for some Links. The first two have good beginners information. Some of the links below may be dead. I just quick cut and pasted them from the astronomy section of my Interesting Places page.

• Astronomy Mag. (www.astronomy.com/home.asp).
• Sky & Telescope Mag. (www.skypub.com).
• Minnesota Astronomical Society (MAS) (www.mnastro.org).
• The Telescope Shoppe (www.telescopeshop.com), 3402 Federal Dr., Eagan, MN, 651-688-7335. Yes this is a local Twin Cities telescope shop. They have a map on their site showing where they are. They are tucked in the lower level along the side of the strip mall they are in. The store is small and easy to miss. If your at the corner of Yankee Doodle RD and Federal Dr., park in the lot to the south east. They are a short stones throw from the intersection.
• Telescope making links
• • Many good links on making AltAz mounts (zebu.uoregon.edu/~mbartels/altaz/altaz.html).
  • ATM's resource List (www.freenet.tlh.fl.us/~blombard).
• Astronomy-Mall.com (www.astronomy-mall.com/Astronomy-Mall).
• Stellafane (www.stellafane.com).
• Terrestrial Planet Finder (tpf.jpl.nasa.gov).
• Many Images of the moon (www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/pxmoon.html) .
• Solar Views (www.solarviews.com).
• Planetary Image Atlas (www-pdsimage.JPL.NASA.GOV/PDS/public/Atlas).
• Hubble Space Telescope Archive (oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pictures.html).
• Hummble Site (hubble.stsci.edu).
• StarStuff (www.starstuff.org).
• SpaceRef (www.spaceref.com), Your space refference.
• Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive (antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html).
• SkyView (skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov) virtual observatory.
• 2MASS (www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/) and (pegasus.astro.umass.edu/GradProg/2mass.html) Two Micron All Sky Survey.
• Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment (LASCO) (http://lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil/lasco.html).
• AAVSO Network to Search for Optical Counterparts of Gamma-Ray Bursts (www.aavso.org/grb.stm).
• High Altitude Observatory (www.hao.ucar.edu).
• Asteroid Comet Impact Hazards (impact.arc.nasa.gov).
• • Unusual Minor Planets (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Unusual.html).
  • Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/PHACloseApp.html).& nbsp; Of particular interest to me are LB16 and AN10 which will pass at a distance closer than the moon's orbit. LB16 currently only has one opposition charted so it's predicted orbit will likely change as new data comes in. It's expected to swing by in 2004. In 2027 AN10 will visit earth. It's orbit is calculated with three oppositions meaning it't much more likely to really showup ontime and in place. With further data LB16 could either get closer or farther away. When AN10's orbit was first predicted (only one opposition at the time) it's error envelope included earth. With further data it was found to just pass within the moon's orbit and miss the earth.
  • Forthcoming Close Approaches To The Earth (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/CloseApp.html).&nbs p; This is the document to look at when you want to know who will visit next and how far away. It has all close approaches to 0.2 AU away from earth or within 20% of the distance of between the sun and earth. On Sep 19th, 2000 we will have a visiter at 0.0477 AU and on Oct 31st anotehr one will pass at 0.07386 AU. LB16 and AN10 are expected to pass at around 0.25% of the distance between the sun and earth.
• Mars Global Surveyor (mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/index.html).
• Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) (ltpwww.gsfc.nasa.gov/tharsis/mola.html). There are full data on the shape of Mars including 1 degree and .5 degree elevation data sets.
• Planetary photojournal by JPL (photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov).
• NASA's Origins Program (origins.jpl.nasa.gov).

Hubble actually does have the capability of imaging planets in the solar system. In fact, that's exactly what the WF/PC2 (Wide Field/Planetary Camera gen. 2) is for. There are some stunning images that Hubble has taken of several solar system bodies, including the Shoemaker-Levy 9 encounter with Jupiter.

Hubble actually does have the capability of imaging planets in the solar system. In fact, that's exactly what the WF/PC2 (Wide Field/Planetary Camera gen. 2) is for. There are some stunning images that Hubble has taken of several solar system bodies, including the Shoemaker-Levy 9 encounter with Jupiter.

Hubble actually does have the capability of imaging planets in the solar system. In fact, that's exactly what the WF/PC2 (Wide Field/Planetary Camera gen. 2) is for. There are some stunning images that Hubble has taken of several solar system bodies, including the Shoemaker-Levy 9 encounter with Jupiter.

Hubble actually does have the capability of imaging planets in the solar system. In fact, that's exactly what the WF/PC2 (Wide Field/Planetary Camera gen. 2) is for. There are some stunning images that Hubble has taken of several solar system bodies, including the Shoemaker-Levy 9 encounter with Jupiter.

In fact, Hubble recorded some great pictures of Shoemaker-Levy's plunge into Jupiter several years ago. Here: Hubble Images of Jupiter and a Comet

We have several of the 480-disk model in the office for storing the digitized sky survey and the Multimission Archive at Space Telescope, excluding the Hubble Data Archive. (We keep the Hubble data on other, larger capacity media.)

I visited Plasmon before we selected their MO jukebox, and the guys there confirmed that you could use the CD-R drives to play music CDs, with the appropriate audio mixer and drivers.

This may, however, be a bit more expensive than you'd like.

tc>

We have several of the 480-disk model in the office for storing the digitized sky survey and the Multimission Archive at Space Telescope, excluding the Hubble Data Archive. (We keep the Hubble data on other, larger capacity media.)

I visited Plasmon before we selected their MO jukebox, and the guys there confirmed that you could use the CD-R drives to play music CDs, with the appropriate audio mixer and drivers.

This may, however, be a bit more expensive than you'd like.

tc>

We have several of the 480-disk model in the office for storing the digitized sky survey and the Multimission Archive at Space Telescope, excluding the Hubble Data Archive. (We keep the Hubble data on other, larger capacity media.)

I visited Plasmon before we selected their MO jukebox, and the guys there confirmed that you could use the CD-R drives to play music CDs, with the appropriate audio mixer and drivers.

This may, however, be a bit more expensive than you'd like.

tc>

All these archives are searchable from the web site, and (if you've registered with them) available for download. Images from HST and CADC are restricted to only the primary researcher(s) for a period of time (I think it's a year).

Apart from having more observatories publish their data (most already do), having a central point to index it (not really here today, but if you want it you can generally find it - if it's not in the sky survey, it's not in the sky), and having M$ run things (please, no!), what does he hope to accomplish?

Apart from having more observatories publish their data (most already do), having a central point to index it (not really here today, but if you want it you can generally find it - if it's not in the sky survey, it's not in the sky), and having M$ run things (please, no!), what does he hope to accomplish?

Wow, that site is really cool. I remember going to it a long time ago, they certainly have kept it going.

Anyway, here's another great pic of 2 more galaxies collding.

And hell, I might as well borrow their html of the description:

Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies will remain. Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will slowly pull each other apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of shocked gas, lanes of dark dust, bursts of star formation, and streams of cast-away stars. Astronomers predict that NGC 2207, the larger galaxy on the left, will eventually incorporate IC 2163, the smaller galaxy on the right. In the most recent encounter that peaked 40 million years ago, the smaller galaxy is swinging around counter-clockwise, and is now slightly behind the larger galaxy. The space between stars is so vast that when galaxies collide, the stars in them usually do not collide.

Wow, that site is really cool. I remember going to it a long time ago, they certainly have kept it going.

Anyway, here's another great pic of 2 more galaxies collding.

And hell, I might as well borrow their html of the description:

Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies will remain. Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will slowly pull each other apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of shocked gas, lanes of dark dust, bursts of star formation, and streams of cast-away stars. Astronomers predict that NGC 2207, the larger galaxy on the left, will eventually incorporate IC 2163, the smaller galaxy on the right. In the most recent encounter that peaked 40 million years ago, the smaller galaxy is swinging around counter-clockwise, and is now slightly behind the larger galaxy. The space between stars is so vast that when galaxies collide, the stars in them usually do not collide.

Actually, if you look at this link it looks like a computer generated image. In fact when I take a second look at it, most CGI planets look better!

And this STScI page offers a much better look at today's new image than CNN's coverage does, and the science isn't dumbed down for the drooling masses.

You are mistaken sir. It's CNN and CBS who are the bandwidth cheapskates.

NASA's pics are huge.

You are mistaken sir. It's CNN and CBS who are the bandwidth cheapskates.

NASA's pics are huge.

Geeeeze I hate that. At least link to the source of the item, not some lame news story.

Oh well I guess Tim's time is better spent doing important things ;).

Here's the right link Hubble Homepage

If you go to the Hubble pictures page you will find they did focus on Pluto and Charon..

The pictures don't reveal much... not enough to wet my whistle, even though it's probably much better than they have ever observed. THe kuiper belt object is far too small to really get much from it.. i mean Pluto is a coupel thousand KM across (i believe) and this new object is like 100 KM

Here Is a link to some pluto as seen by hubble.

Check out this link for a spectacular HST image of colliding galaxies taken in 1995.

is here

Lots of great pictures and hubble info. Of course, this should be in the related links. :)

No, the link was easy to miss, and then, once you're there, it's easy to think you missed something. Those images only technically satisfy Rob's first rule of art... if you're running 1280x1024 or bigger, they don't quite look like Rob-qualified art. Crisco pulled out the best links for us, though.

I wager that if you write to the folks who run the TRACE gallery site, they will point you to images that you have to scale down to fit on your desktop. At least, this worked for me for Hubble Space Telescope images.

In the meantime, check out the awesome image I use for my desktop. (Tips: Click on the small one to see the real eyecandy. Crop off the credits, and place on black background. Collect compliments from fiends and cow-orkers. Distribute only the original, please.)

As an astrophysics major I'd like to reiterate that radio telescopes are an incredibly useful tool for astronomers and are not a product of SETI. The merits of SETI aside, projects like the Very Large Array (VLA) and this are a tremedous boon to the field of astronomy. Of particular interest are studies of objects such as QUASARs and Active Galactic Nuclei, many of which are radio sources, and both of which are poorly understood. (An aside, even though QUASAR came from quasi-stellar radio source they are not all radio sources.) For more information on the non-SETI uses of radio astronomy I direct you to NRAO at http://www.gb.nrao.edu/ and the FIRST survey at http://sundog.stsci.edu/ . These sites are of course only a sample and are the first ones that came to my mind. Antiam

Well these aren't the VLT pics but the HST made
these photos at about the same time. And I believe this site is more slashdot-ready.

s

Well, I can't find these new photos, but here is the original Hubble photo, and also a ground-based photo. (JPG and PDF available.)

More photo links (direct): Picture 1
Picture 2 (Good One)
Picture 3


.sig

More photo links (direct): Picture 1
Picture 2 (Good One)
Picture 3


.sig

More photo links (direct): Picture 1
Picture 2 (Good One)
Picture 3


.sig

NASA Images! And of the comet!

.sig

the Challenger disaster (more of a government coverup than a real disaster--they don't want you to know that it was off it's flight path and on a collision course with Miami)

I'd love to see your evidence for this. The shuttle doesn't have any way to turn 180 degrees while under rocket thrust. If you have evidence for your claim, present it, or else we'll conclude you're just talking through your hat.

the Hubble Telescope which sat out there doing nothing for four years

Wrong. It didn't do nothing, it just didn't generate all the pretty pictures you'd like. There was quite a lot of science going on while the Hubble waited for it's corrective lenses. Look here.

the Mars probes that were suddenly lost

Granted, as a result of the 'faster cheaper' mode of operation. You got one.

and the two year behind schedule International Space Station

Have you checked the Russian economy recently? There are lots of reasons outside the control of NASA for that delay.

1 for 4. That's an accuracy rating of 25%, which means you scored 75 of 100 on the dork-o-meter scale. You can safely be ignored.


...phil

Disclaimer: I own and adore my Handspring Visor Deluxe.

With the M100, Palm is repositioning its entry point. Obviously the cell phone custom-cover idea is carrying over to treat this as yet another consumer electronics device. The features set is pretty much established: you can hit 80% of the market with 20% of the functionality. Make it smaller, put on bright colors, keep the price low, and you've instantly targeted a new demographic.

The Palm has amply proven itself in the business market, and they're clearly not abandoning that with their high-end models. The VIIx (mentioned later in the article, but not pictured) will up the ante for wireless PDAs with more RAM and custom software. Personally I think this is just a lot of experimentation since Bluetooth is going to be the real future in this area, but there is a market for the well-connected businessman or geek.

People are saying things like "gosh, same old Palm, just with colors". Well, yes. It's a proven product that they are now trying to expand the market for. "It's the iMacification of everything". Well, get used to it. Most people don't care about the Megahertz or the Level II cache on their motherboard. The iMac does what they want for a good price and it looks attractive in a den. But the iMac hasn't made towers or big beige boxen disappear, has it? This M100 isn't going to hurt the PDA market at all. In fact, this will be the starter PDA for a lot of people, who will later realize they need wireless modems and web-browsing-on-the-go (or whatever). But a lot more people are willing to experiment at the $150 price point than spend $500+ on yet another electronic toy that turns out to be useless to them.

Also, some people have complained about the wedge at the bottom -- don't forget this is a smaller size case. I haven't used a Palm V... series so I can't comment on how it feels. I do think that it would actually be easier to hold if the bulge were at the top, but maybe that's just me.

As for replacing the IIIe and competing with the Visor, I think they have a good chance. I've bet on Handspring, mainly on the strength of their expansion technology, but the long delays in getting Springboard modules released is getting frustrating (e.g. still no GPS unit; only two games, both golf!). I was also hoping for more movement towards a high-end Visor. I think the M100 is clearly a much stronger competitor than the IIIe ever was, and if it had been out last fall it would have been a more difficult decision for me.

Get ready for the M100 to be under a LOT of Christmas trees.

P.S. M100 is also a nice spiral galaxy, as well as a classic Mercedes Benz sedan ...
----

Moreover, the write once run anywhere myth has been debunked in many places. JIT's in general cannot achieve what a good optimizing compiler can do (PC's generally do not have good optimizing compilers, though they are starting to appear on Linux platforms). A very good way to tell if your C++ compiler is poorly optimizing, is if your Java and your C++ application (identical ones, doing identical work) run at the same speed.

All that said, Java, should it ever become standardized, could be an interesting platform to work on such applications. It is not a computational powerhouse like Fortran, or a string processing powerhouse like Perl, but it has its uses. Once it is standardized, many of the design flaws (numerical, etc) can be fixed properly. After that it might start to get interesting as a distributed computational tool (more of a controlling tool than the tool for calculation).

Actually the gamma-ray burst most often only outshine the whole galaxy, but almost never the universe. Only one time has such a powerful burst been noticed that it momentarily outshone the whole universe. That threw quite a few theories back to the drawing board!

Article about it for example here.

If you follow the IAU Circulars on comets, for example, you'll see that an awful lot of reports are from .25m telescopes and binoculars.

It's also important to remember the SL-9 lesson: Comets do hit planets. If another one hits earth, it'll get ugly.

tc>

Read this:

The actual black hole is so small that there's no way they could measure a small enough volume. A if the popular theory is correct, it's pretty much a certainty the black holes exist - large supernovas should leave enough "dead" debris behind to form one.

AFAIK, it's just very difficult to tell the difference between a black hole and a very massive, dark object.

• UniSci
  
• Space Telescope Science Institute
  
• MSNBC
  
• BBC
  
• CNN (buggy--text at bottom)
  
• Spaceflight Now
  
• Space.com
  
• USA Today (under weather... Bah!)
  
• Fox News
  
• Science Daily
  

This is certainly a long-standing and very interesting question to have addressed (and a kool way to celebrate a ten-year anniversary).

FYI, more information/photos/etc can be found at the space telescope website here

Does this make you feel better?

Check it out.
If you want to know if a target is acceptable, you can try and submit it. It will tell you if the target is valid, and then if it is, we can start voting for it.
I put the link in the article, but if you missed it, here it is again.

The Hubble Heritage Society

Also in celebration of the 10th anniversary, STScI (the people who run the Hubble), have released a newly designed website hubble.site Plus Cowboyneal made a slashbox for hubble.site to show the most current pictures from Hubble!

I find this absolutely offensive! I started working on SkyView nearly seven years ago! The very first web interface went live in March of 1994. Since 1996, SkyView has been called itself "The Internet's Virtual Telescope."

I can understand that Microsoft is trying to generate enthusiasm and good PR for this, but it shouldn't be at the expense of accuracy and truth.

If you don't feel like waiting for Microsoft to make good and want to see pretty pictures (that also mean something to the professionals) check out SkyView . It already contains the Digitized Sky Survey which is an all-sky optical survey comprised of the Palomar plates made back in the 50's for the northern hemisphere and the SERC Southern Sky Survey for the southern hemisphere.

In addition, SkyView goes beyond the optical and has dozens of surveys ranging from radio wavelengths to gamma-rays.

For those who are curious as to how it works, you type in a coordinate or name of object you're interested in as well as the survey(s) you want to view. Your request then is processed and the image is literally created on the fly to match your specifications. For example, in the case of the Digitized Sky Survey, your request will typically be a composite of 10s of compressed images mosaicked together to produce a final image. This is also the reason why it may take up to a minute to display an image (it's a lot of geometric manipulation).

Also, as to not leave out other possibilities, if all you're looking for is optical images, the Space Telescope Science Institute has a DSS archive. It contains First and Second generation images ( SkyView currently only has the First), though it cannot mosaic across different plates whereas SkyView can.

Finally, yes, I have a bit a vested interest in this. I wrote 95-99% of the code for SkyView up until I left a year ago (now in the capable hands of Laura MacDonald with Tom McGlynn as the principal investigator and originator).

Someone or some group may come along and do it better, but I hope they don't forget those who came before them and are here while they talk of what they'll do in the future.

Besides, who do you trust for your astronomy, NASA or Microsoft? (no Martian spacecraft were harmed in the creation of SkyView )

--Keith Scollick scollick@stsci.edu

I find this absolutely offensive! I started working on SkyView nearly seven years ago! The very first web interface went live in March of 1994. Since 1996, SkyView has been called itself "The Internet's Virtual Telescope."

I can understand that Microsoft is trying to generate enthusiasm and good PR for this, but it shouldn't be at the expense of accuracy and truth.

If you don't feel like waiting for Microsoft to make good and want to see pretty pictures (that also mean something to the professionals) check out SkyView . It already contains the Digitized Sky Survey which is an all-sky optical survey comprised of the Palomar plates made back in the 50's for the northern hemisphere and the SERC Southern Sky Survey for the southern hemisphere.

In addition, SkyView goes beyond the optical and has dozens of surveys ranging from radio wavelengths to gamma-rays.

For those who are curious as to how it works, you type in a coordinate or name of object you're interested in as well as the survey(s) you want to view. Your request then is processed and the image is literally created on the fly to match your specifications. For example, in the case of the Digitized Sky Survey, your request will typically be a composite of 10s of compressed images mosaicked together to produce a final image. This is also the reason why it may take up to a minute to display an image (it's a lot of geometric manipulation).

Also, as to not leave out other possibilities, if all you're looking for is optical images, the Space Telescope Science Institute has a DSS archive. It contains First and Second generation images ( SkyView currently only has the First), though it cannot mosaic across different plates whereas SkyView can.

Finally, yes, I have a bit a vested interest in this. I wrote 95-99% of the code for SkyView up until I left a year ago (now in the capable hands of Laura MacDonald with Tom McGlynn as the principal investigator and originator).

Someone or some group may come along and do it better, but I hope they don't forget those who came before them and are here while they talk of what they'll do in the future.

Besides, who do you trust for your astronomy, NASA or Microsoft? (no Martian spacecraft were harmed in the creation of SkyView )

--Keith Scollick scollick@stsci.edu