How Stellar Stylists Turn Astronomical Data Into Amazing Space Images
Cassiopeia A is a 330-year-old ball of red-hot gases and space dust. But with the right makeup and some expert attention, this former star can still look positively radiant.
1. Capture raw images - Space telescopes spit out streams of 1s and 0s—representing light and darkness. Data visualizers begin with tiny black-and-white photos of the supernova remnant, each composed of hundreds of captures from various NASA observatories. Shown here is a raw black-and-white image taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a space telescope launched in 1999.
2. Blend the wavelengths - It may look seamless, but the portrait above is actually a composite of images taken in different wavelengths. (For instance, the infrared comes from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the optical is from the Hubble Space Telescope.) Visualizers then blend and smooth Cass’ problem areas. For the image from Chandra, regions with fewer photons get smeared into soft dust clouds, while more photon-rich parts appear sharper.
3. Colorize
Visualizers assign hues to wavelengths that are invisible to the eye. This isn’t just aesthetics; each color tells a story. Generally, NASA uses the conventions of red = lower energy light, and blue = higher energy. In this image, (infra) red denotes warm carbon dust, yellow is starlight, green is multimillion-degree gas shot out of the dying star, and the blue band of X-rays is the edge of the shock wave of the original detonation. Behold: the stuff that stars are made of.
Images: Microsoft Research; Nasa
I would really love a poster of this.
Come back soon Abstruse Goose, I have missed you.
From NPR’s cosmos and culture blog, 13.7.
Our lives are based on conventions that seem rock solid when they aren’t, at least in comparison with cosmic time-scales. The duration of a day changes in time, determined by the gyrations of the Earth-Moon pair and the incessant workings of the gravitational force.
(via Abstruse Goose)
the image URL says “ghost in hilbert space”
What exactly is a flame? It sounds like a simple question, but to really answer this question it takes a whole lot of science. To be sure, it’s clear cut enough to explain to an expert in physics and/or chemistry, but how does one explain the science behind fire to someone without a breadth of knowledge, say an 11-year old?
That was exactly the question posed by actor and host of Scientific American Frontiers, Alan Alda. He began a contest to see what people could come up with, and the winner (as chosen by a panel of 11-year olds) was this video by graduate student Ben Ames. Ames’s 7 1/2 minute video provides a very thorough explanation while still being entertaining. If you have the time, it’s definitely worth a watch.
Blogger Adam Frank discusses wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics in NPR’s Cosmos and Culture Blog, 13.7.
For classical physicists, particles and waves are like “pregnant” and “not pregnant.” There is no in-between for these two very different kinds of physical “thing”.
And then came quantum mechanics.
From NPR’s Cosmos and Culture blog, 13.7, author Adam Frank discusses the strange nature of quantum mechanics.
Probability is a strange thing. In classical mechanics, events can be determined exactly given sufficient initial information. Classical probability arises when there is simply a lack of sufficient information. However, in quantum mechanics probability is an inherent quality of nature. Until a measurement is actually made, there is no possible way to absolutely determine the outcome of an event. Weird, huh?
Like attracts like?
Everything you thought you knew about electrostatics is probably wrong.
Make two metal spheres positively electrically charged, bring them close together, and what happens? They’ll repel one another, because like charges repel – right?
Wrong. According to physicist John Lekner at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, they will most probably attract one another, violating the intuitions of basic physics. The counterintuitive result was published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A1.
Professor that I met from McGill University explaining HEP (who woks on ATLAS). He is awesome!
About Scott Galica Vs. The World
