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Top 10 Astronomy Images of 2006

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the eye-in-the-sky dept.

The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomical observatories on the ground and in space return many terabytes of data every year. But which bytes are the best? I combed through thousands of pictures to find the Top 10 astronomy images of the year."

11 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. A few others by Salvance · · Score: 4, Informative

    Some of these were pretty good, but I would have liked to see some better shots ... I personally found Top 10 Best Space Stories of 2006 more interesting, and some of the pics in Most Amazing Galactic Images ever were pretty good too.

    Here's a couple other pics that I thought were top 10 material:
    Man in space
    Earth from Satellite

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    1. Re:A few others by nacturation · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The ones in the article are all released in 2006 whereas the Most Amazing Galactic Images include prior years -- though I'd have to agree that many of those are truly spectacular to look at. What I found interesting about the badastronomy.com picks is that they all provide some fairly cool scientific insight behind them as to why they are top 10 picks. The image of the two galaxies colliding isn't all that special looking, but the explanation of how this provided convincing proof of the existence of dark matter makes up for the lack of visual wow-factor.

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  2. Best one has shuttle and ISS in front of the Sun by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    And Mr. Legault lost the sight in one eye to snap that one at the perfect moment showing true commitment.

  3. Not sure about #9 by Average_Joe_Sixpack · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Pretty good list though I would add amateur astronomer Christopher Go's image of Oval BA "aka Red Jr." on Jupiter. This alerted amateurs and pros alike to set their sights on the new red spot.

    1. Re:Not sure about #9 by The+Bad+Astronomer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Heh. Oval BA was in my "Runners Up" list. If I have time tonight I'll put up a second page with 5 more images I like, though more likely it'll be next week.

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      *** Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer http://www.badastronomy.com
  4. Heh. by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Funny

    "That's no face, it's a butte!"

    (Oh, admit it - we're all juvenile here.)

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  5. Saturn photo by NthDegree256 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Many of these were amazing - the sheer scale of some of these images never fails to floor me. The Saturn photo at the end, however, truly sent shivers down my spine at how beautiful it was. Naturally, I was crushed to find that the link to the larger version wasn't working.

    Luckily, the copy on APoD works fine. I thought I'd post it here in case someone else, like me, was looking to make a desktop out of this amazing photo.

    1. Re:Saturn photo by CheshireCatCO · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's basically true-color. I just asked the guy who put the mosaic together and he used some IR and UV filters so it isn't strictly exactly "true" color in that sense, but it is calibrated so all of the colors are balanced to their correct values so that should be what your eye would see. (I think that that should make sense.) Mind you, the colors were not calibrated to research-grade tolerance since it's a diminishing return, so don't take everything as 100% accurate. (And yes, there are lens flares and probably other optics effects in the image.)

  6. More on the Saturn photo by Bromskloss · · Score: 3, Informative

    More on the Saturn photo

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  7. Best = most aesthetically pleasing by syousef · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've studied Astronomy at Masters level. I'm glad an Astronomer put these together instead of just some random artist who would have just picked the most pretty ones. There's still some leaning towards the aesthetic mind you - and there's a lot of science that isn't spectacular but is revolutionary none the less. Number 9 and number 5 are the least scientifically interesting to me, though artistically/photographically and from the point of view of timing I can see why they were included.

    I'm not surprised at quality here though. Bad Astronomy is an awesome web site.

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  8. Re:A couple of stunning ones by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Informative

    I was shocked by photos showing the rover. The rovers aren't that big so the resolution was amazing. I'd love to see some shots of the "tree" formation like that. The general belief is the are some form of ice crystals but they must be amazing looking. They were quite large on the lower res shots.

    I assume you are talking about these:

    http://mmmgroup.altervista.org/e-trees.html

    The new orbiter is about 5-to-10 times clearer than the one that took those "tree" photos. It has a big-ass camera, so if it can get over the right area of Mars, we could have splended images of those "ice trees".

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