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Hubble Snaps Pix Of Dying Supernova
The Hubble has taken some great pictures of a supernova according to CNN. You can get a more indepth article, and more pictures from Space.com story on the same subject. Purty explosions!
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This big enough? :)
(got from here)
A supernova (as in this instance) is a dying Star not a dying supernova. The supernova is actually quite young.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Here's the Hubble homepage and here is the original version at few defferent sizes, formats, and borders.
You make a remarkably ill-informed post for someone with the arrogance to give themselves a nick like PhysicsGenius.
Your assertions that only projects which will make HST "look good" get time, and that approved HST projects must conform to the narrow vision of a small number of people, are demonstrably false. Anyone who knows the first thing about modern telescope scheduling in general (and HST's scheduling in particular), knows that it's just about the opposite of what you claim.
Observing time on HST is not determined by "bureaucrats" nor by "politicians". The Time Allocation Committee (TAC) is comprised of active research astronomers, who judge the huge number of proposals on scientific merit. The TAC members are different every observing semester, and they all come from outside of STScI (the institute which "runs" HST). Indeed, those who are selected to be on the TAC have a wide variety of interests and perspectives on how "important" a particular project is. I'm sure you can understand how this diversity of opinion leads to a more objective judgement by the TAC as a whole. In other words, the rotating TAC system does a good job of reflecting the opinion of the entire astronomical community.
In short, you have no idea what you're talking about. Why would a "PhysicsGenius" make up slanderous statements about one of the greatest scientific instruments ever constructed? The mind boggles...
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
The colors in this particular image are especially misleading.
In most HST "pretty-picture" images, the colors are at least representative of reality. You take three images, through "blue", "green" and "red" filters, then stack them, with each layer driving the appropriate R,G,B value of the color composite. The result may be more saturated than reality, but you get at least some idea of how it would look to your eye.
However, this image is a stack of "narrow-band" images, centered on particular atomic emission lines. These narrow-band images are incredibly useful scientifically, because they let you study the energetics and chemistry inside the SN remnant, as well as the shock conditions of the gas. However, the colors are assigned arbitrarily, and have no connection to how the object would actually look.
Unfortunately I saw no caveat to this effect in either the CNN article (no suprise) nor the space.com article (mildly disappointing).
I mean, why not add a phrase in there like: "In reality, Cas A is not so colorful. The vivid colors are added to the image to help scientists map out different chemicals and their ionization states, which allows them to determine the strength of the original explosion, and how it has evolved to its present state."
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.