A couple of weeks ago when I first read about this issue I asked my father about it (he's a former Assistant District Attorney in NYC). He said that the same thing happened with fingerprints. People on the jury always wanted to see fingerprint evidence because that is what they read about in crime novels. He says that it's just one more thing that the prosecution has to explain and that it shouldn't be an issue for a good prosecutor. I think the only difference is the media that is being referenced and after the "newness" dies down it won't be a major issue.
I would recommend The Extravagent Universe, by Robert Kirshner. It gives a good explanation of the new discoveries in cosmology; specifically the idea that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Kirshner has a very enjoyable writing style, with stories from his own life thrown in (he is the head of one of the two competeing teams that study the supernovae that led to the accelerating universe theory). He makes a few assumptions about your knowledge of astronomy, but if you've gotten through the elegent universe you should have no trouble with this. I found the book very enjoyable.
Almost all modern optical/IR/X-ray telescopes use a CCD to capture the light that is incident on the telescope. Each pixel in the CCD can hold a certain number of electrons (which are produced when a photon hits the pixel). When that number is exceeded, usually through too many photons hitting the same pixel as in this case, the electrons spill over into the surrounding pixels. This is called blooming and produces the spikes that you see in the image. So basically, the spikes mean that the star is overexposed.
The image is not actually a single exposure of 3.5 days in duration, but is actually made from 250 separate exposures taken from Dec. 2 to Jan. 11, 2003. The total exposure time was 3.5 days.
For those who are interested, the original hubble press release is located here.
The site includes the image in a variety of different formats, including a 123 MB tiff file.
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A couple of weeks ago when I first read about this issue I asked my father about it (he's a former Assistant District Attorney in NYC). He said that the same thing happened with fingerprints. People on the jury always wanted to see fingerprint evidence because that is what they read about in crime novels. He says that it's just one more thing that the prosecution has to explain and that it shouldn't be an issue for a good prosecutor. I think the only difference is the media that is being referenced and after the "newness" dies down it won't be a major issue.
I would recommend The Extravagent Universe, by Robert Kirshner. It gives a good explanation of the new discoveries in cosmology; specifically the idea that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Kirshner has a very enjoyable writing style, with stories from his own life thrown in (he is the head of one of the two competeing teams that study the supernovae that led to the accelerating universe theory). He makes a few assumptions about your knowledge of astronomy, but if you've gotten through the elegent universe you should have no trouble with this. I found the book very enjoyable.
Almost all modern optical/IR/X-ray telescopes use a CCD to capture the light that is incident on the telescope. Each pixel in the CCD can hold a certain number of electrons (which are produced when a photon hits the pixel). When that number is exceeded, usually through too many photons hitting the same pixel as in this case, the electrons spill over into the surrounding pixels. This is called blooming and produces the spikes that you see in the image. So basically, the spikes mean that the star is overexposed.
The image is not actually a single exposure of 3.5 days in duration, but is actually made from 250 separate exposures taken from Dec. 2 to Jan. 11, 2003. The total exposure time was 3.5 days.
For those who are interested, the original hubble press release is located here.
The site includes the image in a variety of different formats, including a 123 MB tiff file.