Slashdot Mirror
A Star of Space and Film
Rollie Hawk writes "Three years ago, light from V838 Monocerotis (a star about 20,000 light years from us) reached the Earth that showed the star exploding. The more politically correct term for what happened is "stellar outburst." In the time since, images from a pulse of light released during the outburst have been arriving here on Earth. In October of 2004, Hubble captured a beautiful image of the scene with the pulse lighting up interstellar gasses that encapsulated the area around this red giant (a star 600,000 times brighter than our Sun). The release of this photo just days ago seems rather timely, as it appears that some of Hubble's funding may be cut in the near future. There is also talk of eliminating the program entirely."
Hubble has done exceptionally well. But it is an old horse, and instead of an expensive manned mission to fix it and keep it going for a few more years, I'd rather see the money put into a new telescope that incorporates all the lessons learned from Hubble. Namely, modules that can be replaced without a manned mission. I think we'd get a better value if we did something like that.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Anyways, before our Sun could go supernova, it would have to swell to red giant so large that it would engulf the Earth, so it's a moot point.
In that regard though, the explosion would be more than enough to destroy Pluto without slowing down. The Sun makes up 99.9% of the mass in our solar system, and so the planets wouldn't really have much of a defense.
Fnord.
These images are made from spectral data not visible light(other than the fact the spectral data for the exposure MAY lie in the visible spectrum). The hubble is a digital camera but not like the type you have at home. The WFC3 (wide field planetary camera version 3) or the COS (Cosmic Origins Spectrograph) take the images. Exposure times can be many minutes,and the instruments are very sensitive and highly calibrated. In fact they are calibrated to a known light source and a known dark source before each exposure. There are also filters that can be applied before the light reaches the camera so that only wavelengths in a given spectral range hit the detectors. Then the images are sent to the ground as binary data as groups of spectral frequency bins which are then post-processed (a the Space Science Institute) to give the (false) color images. The colors are pretty close to correct but are not perfect. So, yea they ARE manufactured in some sense by the Gov't ;)
Hubble is nowhere near state of the art (some software in it is 25-30 yrs old) but it works and has exceeded the wildest expectations of it's builders. Kind of a Brooklyn Bridge in space, the first one built but still works great and setting a high standard.