Slashdot Mirror
Space Pictures From Near and Far
Buran writes: "The BBC News has a fine story about the how our galaxy looks from the outside according to the 2-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS). The article describes the shape of our galaxy (a barred spiral; all those books showing concept paintings of a regular spiral galaxy will be out of date now) and how the survey was done (near-infrared measurements of 500 million carbon stars). For the first time, we can see the center of our own Milky Way. All our worldly troubles seem so small..." That takes care of the big picture; Chris McKinstry has submitted news of much closer but just as exciting shots of Saturn -- read below for more on those.
mindpixel writes: "I was very excited when I saw this amazing shot of Saturn come up on the control room monitors of the VLT in November, and I'm even more excited that as of today the image is finally public. It is possibly the sharpest view of Saturn's ring system ever achieved from a ground-based observatory. All of us here at the observatory are quite proud of it, especially the NAOS-CONICA team."
Had the title been simply "Pictures From Near And Far", nobody would read it. But, the addition of "Space" makes it infinitely more attractive.
Try it. Space Ice Cream. Yum! Ice Cream. Boring. Space Frisbee! Exciting! Frisbee. Dull, lifeless. Space Herpes! Oh, wait...
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It suffices to travel toward the galactic north for 50,000 light-years or so and snap a picture. Gee, why all the effort?
To be honest, I was always a bit dissappointed that I wasn't living in a barred spiral. Turns out I am. Nifty. :)
I can't wait until Cassini gets within range of Saturn, it is definitly one of the most amazing things in the sky. Unfornatually it's largly been ignored by many high-power telescopes and space probes.
What NASA/ESA and all the other agencies in the world need to do is send out a swam of probes to *every* planet - a little science is better than no science!
Isn't micron symbolized by a "" ?
It would be 2ASS then... looks like something someone would say in an AOL chat room...
please flame me if I'm wrong.
...exciting shots of Saturn
The first few are free, but if you want more goto Saturn's website and pay $19.95 a month and see all of Saturn.
Sorry couldn't help myself.
=)
For sale: One novelty T-shirt, displaying the (formerly correct) image of the Milky Way, and the words "You Are Here" with arrow. Lightly used. Almost clean.
Moving further out, apparently our Galaxy-cluster as viewed from the outside, looks kind of like a small handful of Swedish meatballs, wrapped in lavendar tissue paper and tied with a length of green and yellow ribbon.
Or so I'm told....
I jumped on the space bandwagon late, and it's really only been recently that I've developed an interest at all. So I'm in a unique position of learning basic facts that others take for granted, at an age where I can appreciate the grandeur. For instance, the fact that there are truly *billions and billions* of stars *just in our galaxy*. That had me reeling for a couple of days... I don't want to ramble, but *man* is space cool. And space icecream is cool, too, I guess :-)
Sorry to say it, but that picture of Saturn is just too perfect, it looks like a cheap computer rendition. Can we go back to the less sophisticated, grainy pictures? They were more exciting and seemed more "real".
is a sign pointing at the Earth stating 'You are here.'
Sig? What sig? Do I have to have a sig!?!?
Yippie! I always thought they looked cooler than those so-called "s1" galaxies. I'm soo proud to live in such an upscale neighborhood. Eat my dust, S1 riffraff!
io hymen hymnaee io
io hymen hymnaee
At the AAS meeting a few weeks ago, a Chandra (X-Ray observatory) team produced this stunning mosiac of the Galactic Center.
It's amazing. Also, apparently the supposed massive black hole in our galaxy's center is 'off', so there's not a lot of emission from it, instead we see remnants of earlier activity (such as Sagittarius A).
A.
Is it just me, or was the picture of the barred galaxy just a little disappointing? Looks just like all the other pictures of spiral galaxies I've seen, except a little less spiral-like. Of course, if I knew what all the parts meant, it might be a little more impressive.
Unfortunately, once you've seen those mind-staggering pictures of galaxies and stars being born, you get a little jaded.
What if life is just a side effect of some other process and God has no idea we exist?
You know, if the United States Federal Government would get off it's duff, reform the tax system and be a little more responsable with where it spends money there would be the dollars for these things.
The EU won't foot the bill for a swarm of probes, so that leaves the US, Canada and Japan.
However, if they scaled up production of these things, the economy of scale would kick in and the overall price of these beasties would drop.
Right now, the probes are a one time knockoff and are as expensive as a Italian exotic sportscar is compared to a Lexus or Lincoln.
Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown, And things seem hard or tough, [clunk] And people are stupid, obnoxious, or daft, And you feel that you've had quite enough, [boom]
[singing] Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour, That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned, A sun that is the source of all our power. The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see Are moving at a million miles a day In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour, Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars. It's a hundred thousand light years side to side. It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick, But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide. We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point. We go 'round every two hundred million years, And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions In this amazing and expanding universe. [boom] [slurp]
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding In all of the directions it can whizz As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know, Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is. So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure, How amazingly unlikely is your birth, And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
When you have ASCII Star Wars?
It's full of STARS!
^nA! Creatures in my Head
Your post actually is actually more culturally relevant than you might think. Gustave Courbet painted in 1866 a work entitled 'L'Origine du monde' (The origin of the world), which was a detailed painting of the nether parts of a human female. It was a private comission (some rich business guy wanted it), but raises the stakes on the old pornography or art question at a far earlier date than many might realize, besides the interesting commentary of the work's title. For the curious and over 18, you can view the painting at the Artchive here.
Oh the things you learn in art history class.
-Wombat
Imagine how many space probes the $50 billion extra, that George W wants to spend on making bombs and guns, could build and launch.
The people in charge of this planet must be stupid. They devote all our resources to killing eachother or making crap TV programs and holywood schlock when they could be funding planetary exploration.
Try justifying this expenditure to a child interested in astronomy.
All those dumb American flags everyone bought after s11 could probably fund an inter-planetary probe... It's like the whole world is navel gazing when there is so much to see.
* * Always question "the National Interest" - 9 times out of 10 it is a cover for evil
Take a look at that picture of the center of the galaxy again -- one of the biggest challenges to astronomy is how to catalogue every single object visible and create a rapidly searchable database. And that picture is not even 10% of the sky, in only one band! Astronomers are having to come up with new ways of loading, structuring, and searching multi-TB datasets to get incredible science out of the flood of data. The future of astronomy is in these multi-TB databases, in multiple wavelengths, which create the "National Virtual Observatory".
If you want to understand the science that these databases would make possible, imagine if your business had a searchable database of the entire population of the world, with parameters like age, height, weight, income, address, phone number, spending habits, and more, for every single person.
Have a look at this link for what some scientists think a virtual observatory will be capable of!
As is so often the case in journalism, this claim is wildly overselling things (and is not made in the BBC article.) I was using IRAS (infrared astronomy satellite) and various earthbound surveys (including the much earlier TMSS two micron all sky survey) around 1990, and have an IRAS poster from that era at home showing our galaxy (including the core.) Similarly, we have known for over a decade that our galaxy is a barred spiral.
Is this a case of the more overblown your submission, the more likely slashdot is to carry the story?
I'm not knocking the 2MASS survey - high quality all sky surveys like this lead to huge amounts of high quality science.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Even lamer than Apple Records?
"We'll give anybody who asks a contract." Riiiight.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
I should have read more carefully - the BBC article *does* incorrectly claim this as a first: "Evident in the map, and seen directly for the first time, is the cigar-shaped bar..."
My apologies to the submitter of this story.
Also, I have checked and found it was COBE (cosmic background explorer) not IRAS that made my poster. Here it is. Notice how this too reveals the squarish, thicker towards the edges shape of the bulge indicating a bar seen obliquely.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Why isn't there a big blind spot on the opposite side of the calactic center? Can the MASS see through the center, or are they just filling in what they assume is there?
Furthermore, can we see objects farther away on the opposite side of the galactic center? If not, how big is the blind spot?
http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/gallery/gc_movie .html
it's of the galactic center
pretty cool
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Sorry for the troll, or whatever a simple question might be called. But I am curious and too lazy to go find out on the web. How is a barred spiral different from a 'normal' one?
[news for me, stuff that doesn't matter]
It seems some moderators are better at fucking what little karma a guy has than interpreting sarcasm. I believe that you all know the appropriate discussion by now. Good day.
I'm sure it's been posted before, but I don't have the patience to look for it.
MMMMMM Milky Way. That is the first thing that I thought of when I read the article. I could sure go in for a candy bar.
And (okay now I'm getting deep) that's the problem with getting funding for space probes. My stomach is a lot more important to me than Uranus (or Pluto). Even if it costs next to nothing, I don't want to spend money on a probe when I could be spending money on making my life nicer.
Knowledge is all well in good, but there's no nugguty center.
Sweat
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
Well I just happen to think that science, astronomy and the quest for knowledge is a better "pet interest" than building killing devices and using them on peasants in the third world while waving the "stars and stripes" so god damn close to your face that anyone who disagrees or dares to point out US hyprocrisy is part of the imaginary "Evil Axis".
I fart in your general direction!
* * Always question "the National Interest" - 9 times out of 10 it is a cover for evil
Nice picture of the galaxy... but was anyone else disappointed to find that the little red arrow with the words "You are here" was absent?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
We've known for over ten years that the Milky Way is a barred spiral -- where have you been?
I moderate at +3, Highest Scores, and I always mod down.
If you don't like it, vote me off the island.
Saturn is about 340 pixels wide in the high-resolution version of this picture. With an equatorial radius of 60268 km this translates into a pixel width of 177 km on the surface of Saturn.
The picture was taken from a distance 1209 million km, or 3215 times the surface-to-surface distance from the Earth to the Moon.
177 km divided by 3215 is 55 meters, and that is why you can't point this telescope at the moon and photograph the descent stage of a lunar lander. Actually the resolution could theoretically be a little better if the photograph was taken att shorter wavelengths, but still not good enough to catch man-made equipment on the moon.
we can infer the presence of a bar-like structure in the central regions.
But would that be Slim's Throat Emporium or the Evildrome Boozerama?
"Information wants to be paid"
Oops! 340 pixels is actually the diameter while 60268 km is the radius. So the pixel width turns out to be 354 km, and the corresponding resolution on the lunar surface would be 110 meters. Luckily, the conclusion is the same.
I was under the impression that the centre of our galaxy contained a large black hole or similar object. Can't see it on this one, unless its that big glowy object they've false coloured about 2/3rds of the way down the piccie.
Anyone care to post a modified picture with a big arrow pointing to it??
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
It all seems a bit premature to me.
today is spelling optional day.
I didn't know either. This page was helpful. Now I'm wondering what subtype we are though.
-no broken link
...Shouted an anonymous voice from the crowd. Its obvious its from Monty Python. As for getting getting modded up, I don't live for karma like you obviously do, otherwise you would have chosen to use your id. Perhaps the subject should have been "So, can we have your liver then?". Perhaps I was remiss in giving Monthy Python credit, but actually thought that it would be recognized as what it was. In the future I'll spell out each and every detail for you so you can clearly understand my intention as you obviously didn't.
Where can I find a higher resolution picture of that external view of the galaxy? I didn't see anything at the 2MASS site. Are they the ones who created that image?
Isn't that exactly what we do with the dinosaurs? Although we can make guesses as to what they used to look like, no palentologist will ever claim they know for sure what any dionsaur looks like or sounds like.
today is spelling optional day.
Mars Inc.
(Horrible website)
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
While the BBC article was interesting, and the thought of mapping half a billion stars is a bit overwhelming, I am stunned by the pointlessness of the included graphic. It shows the Milky Way from an exterior point on its equatorial plane. Almost all galaxies look alike from this position. What in the world is the author thinking? This is like taking the trouble to visit France, but rather than send home pictures of the Eiffel Tower, one sends home pictures of clouds and rainbows.
Black holes are generally divided into two categories based on their mass: there are "galactic" black holes like Cygnux X-1, which are ~10 solar mass black holes often found in binary systems within our own galaxy, and then there are "supermassive" black holes with masses of ~10 million suns that sit at the centers of other galaxies.
The black hole at the Galactic Center is often described as "massive" because its mass is "only" 2.6 million solar masses - lower than typical "supermassive" black holes by a factor of 5-10. In addition, the spectrum of Sgr A* (the name for the black hole at the Galactic Center, or at least for the radio source now associated with the region immediately surrounding the black hole) is fainter at almost all wavelengths than the spectrum of "typical" supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei, so we call it "massive", and we stop short of calling the center of our galaxy an active galactic nucleus.
-Gabe
I have to ask this, as it's perplexed me for a while - if the galaxy is about 125,000 light years across, when we look at the far reaches of the galaxy, we're looking way back in time at where they were *then*.
Do constructed photos like this one take into account that the features of the galaxy at that range from us have changed over that period of time? To phrase it another way, are we looking at the galaxy as it really is, with everything in the spots it would be in taking stellar motion into account, or are we looking at the galaxy as it appears to us with all that old light finally hitting the camera position?
Thinking about big distances makes my head hurt.
GMFTatsujin
I guess that's why it's a *barred* galaxy. :)
Never attribute to stupidity what can be construed as a monopoly preservation tactic.
From memory, I think we are about SBab (i.e. about midway between an a and a b). It is a bit difficult to tell from inside, and so far as I know it is a subjective scale rather than quantitative. Basically it measures the ratio between bulge and disk size. Larger galaxies tend towards the 'a' end. We are in a quite large spiral galaxy.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
"He's a celebrated linguist, not a political thinker."
Chomsky is an intellectual in the true meaning of the word. Not only is he brilliant in his academic field , but he speaks up for those with no voice and articulates for those who can not. This is the mark of a true intellectual, not some fat assed scientist who gets paid to sit on defence panels working out how to justify the power of the already powerful!
You are dismissing a man whose gone face-to-face with people like Foucult!!! He is also not afraid to take on those on the so-called LEFT over matters of principal. Defending a Nazi apologists right to free speech a while ago.
"He has so much emotional hatred of the United States that it clouds his thinking."
Chomsky contantly sites independent sources to back up his claims (if anything he sites too often making it difficult to follow his argument). This is precisely because he wants to show that what he says actually happens, and that what most people hear (or don't hear) is not the whole truth... indeed it is "manufactured".
Indeed it seems to me that your socialised emotional love of the United States (yeah, wave that flag) blinds you to what your country actually does both domestically and internationally.
* * Always question "the National Interest" - 9 times out of 10 it is a cover for evil