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Spitzer's 5-Gigapixel Milky Way
James Harold writes "Today NASA unveiled a new infrared mosaic of our galaxy. The result of over 800,000 individual images collected by the Spitzer Space Telescope, it is the largest, highest-resolution, and most sensitive infrared picture ever taken of the Milky Way (and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future). Because Spitzer sees in infrared, it penetrates much farther into the galaxy, revealing previously hidden star clusters, star-forming regions, shocked gases, glowing 'bubbles' and more. The complete mosaic is about 400,000 by 13,000 pixels, and a 180' printed version is being shown at the American Astronomical Society meeting in St. Louis. A zoomable, annotated version of two different variants on the image (as well as some additional information on the science) is available at Alien Earths, a NASA- and NSF-supported education site." The Spitzer survey is already causing a stir potentially bigger than that raised when Pluto was deemed not a planet: two minor spiral arms of the Milky Way may be demoted.
Wow they took a 400,000 by 13,000 pixel image and compressed it to a 200x200 jpeg to wow us net folks, stellar.
The average lay person is not going to care about the status of spiral arms in the galaxy. Everybody learned that Pluto was a planet in grade school. That fact gives the average person a stake in its status. When you ask about a spiral arm, you'll hear "huh?".
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
If this information is owned by the government, it should be free to the citizens, and hence free to google sky, or the other alternatives. Why doesn't this immediately go that direction?
I understand Google Earth/etc. being bound by paying terrestrial satellite owners for photos, but I would think NASA could get better public support if they were more available in the sky.
http://www.alienearths.org/glimpse/glimpse.php and launching the viewer will bring up the zoomable image mentioned
The image is here. Yet again great editing.
But, the images (the huge ones) are right there, here is the direct link to the huge images http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2008-11/ssc2008-11a.shtml
Okay, I realize the tag says !eliot, but when the summary says: Spitzer, penetrates, revealed, and shocked, it makes me think that Slashdot is trying to embed secret messages in TFS.
i've had just about enough of your vassar bashing.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
well they should've shot it in low iso, those damn ccd noise is unbearable
And here I was thinking I was gonna see hi-res pictures of Eliot's whore with his jizz on it...
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
It's working fine for me on GQview, on Xubuntu. Konqueror loads it up fine, too. I didn't even try to open it on firefox; I know the image viewing on it sucks! For viewing images on a browser on my windows system, I use K-Meleon. I've often wondered why firefox won't add that handy little advanced zoom in/out feature!
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
IrfanView worked fine for me, but be warned the Images are ~1gb of raw data each so if you don't have at least 1.5GB of RAM your computers going to be hurting on these.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
It really isn't that extra.
We have no problem printing 20k pixels wide images. Our now rather old HP printer only print 106 cm but prints can be as long as the paper rolls allow.
At 200 px/inch the print will be 2,5 meters - really nothing fancy.
I do a couple of prints like that every month.
However, the cost of black ink for a picture of the night sky, that will hurt a bit.
Bikers.....The only people that understand why a dog hangs his head out a car window.
"two minor spiral arms of the Milky Way may be demoted."
I suspected something like this might happen, I just didn't dream that they'd go so far.
I mean, you have to be just a little suspicious about whether all star-forming arms are on an equal footing when you look at the names. There's Perseus and Sagittarius. Then we get to Scutum-Centaurus, and you have to wonder if the astronomers needed a leg up in the imagination department. And then all doubt vanishes when we get to the fourth arm...Norma. Yes, Norma. Like the girl who couldn't wait to get old enough to disown her parents, legally change her name to Chantal and get a job at the brass-pole ballet.
You just had to know they were having their doubts about arm number 4.
On a more positive note, the same bunch of guys who just slammed Scutum-Centaurus and, um, "Norma", are also telling us that they "obtained detailed information about our galaxy's bar, and found that it extends farther out from the centre of the galaxy than previously thought".
A bar that's closer to the house than you thought can't be a bad thing. Especially when you need to walk home.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Next time maybe they'll take the picture during the day.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."