5 Responses to “The Infrared Universe”  

1. 1 Solar Flare on May 8th, 2006 said:

   That’s a gorgeous little slideshow; that Cigar Galaxy is more aesthetically pleasing than the “brown” one, since it really accentuates the gas clouds. Seeing false-color images just makes me want to see things for myself. I’ll be long dead before we figure out how to build spaceships to cruise around, but I have little doubt that it will be done eventually…that is if we don’t collapse in collective stupidity.

   Anyway, if The Science Channel has already done this, then I missed it, but to me it would be interesting to show (as with the “how things are made” programs) the day in the life of an astro-image. Take one of Hubble’s, or whichever telescope, most popular, fantastic images and show how it’s created. Maybe it would be useful to understand the degree of work that goes into that neat-O wallpaper, the false-colors, etc. etc. just to get those images. These things are explained on the sites, but well, you know, people watch TV more than they read!

   Even still, the best way to get people interested, or at least appreciative, in all this space stuff is to stick a good telescope in front of their face, stick them in front of a live rocket, and such things like that. They won’t forget it.

   BTW, I found my mother’s Introductory to Astronomy book in my boxes here in CT. It was when I looked through the university telescope at 8 years old. The book is punctuated by all these B.C. cartoons related to astronomy that are pretty amusing. I’ll have to copy them, or I can photograph them with my new Nikon Coolpix 5600 digicam I got for an early b’day present. Yay!

   Anyway, aside from the technical information, in the chapter on time there’s a B.C. strip where the two dudes are looking at a sundial, and one says, “You’ll never guess what I’ve created here.” The other dude bends over to look at the sundial and replies, “A race of neurotics.” This excerpt of the chapter on time somewhat touches upon my childhood issue with time (and one summer I did put all the clocks in the closet, lol.), but it’s basically a simple yet poetic addition to the technical stuff, imo.

   Time is a phenomenon with which we come into contact every day of our lives. Like early man, we are aware of diurnal alternation between day and night. As modern men, we continually consult our watches (the demigods of industrial society) to be certain that unlike the white rabbit, we are not in danger of losing our heads by being late. Time is embodied in the very language that we use to communicate with one another; the past, present, and future incorporate subtle distinctions in progressive tenses. We see time which is lineal and cyclical working in nature. Days become nights; the year passes through the four seasons and then repeats the process; waves beat upon the shore in what appears to be the rhythm of eternity. Although the waves seem to be eternal, the shoreline is slowly eroded away. Man’s life is a definite linear transition: birth, growth, and death. All these phenomena are aspects of time’s presence in the world.

   From the average man’s perspective, time is a normal part of his life. Without time, a three-minute poached egg would almost be an impossibility. Yet time is a frightening question because it is a force that devours man. Wise men have realized tht there are things in the universe that are beyond man’s ability to comprehend. Man must finally accept his own inadequacies and realize that he is not as all-powerful as he believes. Alfred N. Whitehead, a profound pjilosopher and physicist, said that “it is impossible to meditate on time and the mysteries of the creative passage of nature without an overwhleming emotion at the limitations of human intelligence.”

   The textbook was written in 1972 by Nicholas A. Pananides and published in 1973. There are some very cool photographs from Hale Observatory. Most interesting to me is looking at the Mariner photographs of Mars and what we’re getting today, and what we’ll hopefully get tomorrow. It makes you wonder just where our limitations end.

   :-)

   (BTW, I wrote a long reply to the Geography post of yours and lost it. Argh.)

2. 2 sunil on May 9th, 2006 said:

   In my opinion: there is a continues process is going on to frame the galaxies on a large scale, even after the bigbang the processes are just going on to shape the space fancyfully. Later we will see that no space is empty in the sky.

   In the initial period there may be the great pieces of the matter in the space later when that matter continuously bursting the number of galaxies were forming in the space, the birth of new things in the space is quite a continuous process, and the above study shows the same evidences.

   sunil

3. 3 Portraits on Aug 15th, 2006 said:

   Wow, the composite view of M82 is incredible. Do you have access to a high-res jpeg of it? I’d love to get a huge print of it on canvas…

   Cheers,
   John

4. 4 Wolverine on Aug 15th, 2006 said:

   Hi John,

   The largest versions I’m aware of can be found on this Hubblesite page. More resolutions are also available here. Enjoy.

5. 5 Portrait Photography on Oct 7th, 2006 said:

   You know I’m always amazed by interstellar images especially those that appear like fireworks. For this reason, I’ve always dreamed of capturing a perfect picture of a fireworks display using my camera. Some of my photos turned out well but they’re not as good as what these guys from NASA have. I wonder what their photographic secret is.

   John

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