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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."
Superman escaping from the planet?
Here is NASA's Astronomy picture of the day site Astronomy picture of the day with the same picture and a brief explanation (with hyperlinks).
Enjoy
As I was reading the articles (Hey!, I'm new to Slashdot!!) it occured to me. We always say that the sun will end in billions of years, probably much more years that the human race will be able to exist. But the question I asked myself is, what would be the consequences of the outburst of a "nearby" star. I mean, would the shockwave be big enough to reach earth? Will the gases and radiations be able to reach earth??
If you go to the HST web site, you can see an entire series of images of V838 Mon over the past three years.
v e/ releases/2005/02/image/a
y /i mg_display.php?pic=light_echo_graphic_030326_02,0. jpg
o _0 30326.html
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archi
Although the series _appears_ to show a shell of gas expanding outwards from the star, it does not. Instead, what we see is the expanding echo of light reflecting off gas and dust in the interstellar medium, between V838 Mon and the Earth. It might help to look at a nice diagram of the "light echo" effect provided by space.com:
http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedispla
The European Space Agency also has a good description of the event:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/light_ech
The fact that no material is actually shooting outwards into space as fast as the pictures appear to indicate -- that we are simply seeing a reflection of light as it moves through the gas cloud, like the beam of a flashlight swept through the air in a dusty room -- explains how the shell can _appear_ to expand outwards faster than light.
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
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.
Is there some ethnic minority exploding stars that will be offended??
A very interesting thing about this stellar outburst is the possibility to get a 3D image of the cloud surrounding the star. Images of this event taken months apart (like this sequence) show the flash of light as it expands, illuminating regions of space that form spherical shells around the star. This gives a unique insight into the actual threedimensional structure of the cloud, a bit like a CAT scan builds a 3D view from a sequence of planar 2D images. Pity we don't have (for all I know) one picture per day: it would have made a stunning movie! No to mention the scientific value...
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
It's not really *that* detailed- each pixel is at the very least a few hundred thousand kilometers across. And it's so sharp because the light is traveling through space, so there's nothing to blur the image or attenuate its intensity (besides the inverse-square law).
As a very *amateur* backyard astronomer,
I think there is nothing wrong with the question. You actually get this kind of reaction almost all the time when people peer through a telescope for the first time expecting to see the types of images that appear on telescope boxes, in books, and in the media. Fabulous images of space that look nothing like that to the naked eye. People then get very skeptical (out of dissapointment) that space isn't like they thought it was gonna be. Obviously, looking through a telescope in your backyard shows nothing like what we see in pictures like the one referenced in this article.
With that said, the technology available in light gathering (in terms of sensitivity, especially in space where there is a lot less matter to block light) and the ability to apply filters to so many different wavelengths can really enhance interstellar phenomena. And actually, even the technology available to the amateur is nothing short of amazing. Just take a look the back of Sky and Telescope or Astronomy magazine to see amateur astrophotography.
I guess the important thing to keep in mind is that these pictures are enhanced. It doesn't mean the phenomena doesn't exist. Light is shooting out from the star, and it is passing clouds of interstellar medium that reflect that light, at all different wavelengths. People then just spend a ton of time, money, and computing power to enhance those images so that people can appreciate what goes on in our own backyard.
In the end, i guess you do have to trust that the base data itself is not "manufactured" by the government, but the data is certainly enhanced once its collected.
jeff
And the 3 came from 2005-2002 (after re-reading the site, I should have chosen 2 (and hence 12 instead of 11) since the picture comes from 2004, but that doesn't change the explanation).
Imagine this: I'm blind and deaf, so the only way I can get communication from you is when you throw me a braille ball. Now, I know that all braille balls travel at 1 m/s, and I (somehow) know that you're 20,000 meters away (you're a really strong thrower), so when I catch your ball I know that you threw it 20,000 seconds ago. Now, there's a wall 14 meters from you that you simultaneously throw a second ball towards, and amazingly it reaches me after only 20,002 seconds! Well, since I know that it took 14 seconds for that ball to reach the wall, I subtract 14 from 20,002 to get 19,988. I now conclude that the wall is only 19,988 meters from me (i.e., it's 12 meters closer to me than you are), without needing to conclude that the ball has broken its "law" of traveling at 1 m/s.
I hope that helps.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
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.