The final frontier...

[Steve Maskery]

Ptretty pictures:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23691292
Enjoy
S

 

[blackrodd]

Incredible! Rodders

 

[spinks]

Awesome pictures....but something confuddleises me....the massive great big telescopes these days that look into deep space...they are not telescopes as we would know them but are "radio" telescopes...looking at "noise" and interpreting the noise into pictures...so are the pictures we see of say the horsehead nebula an actual picture of a computer rendition of what the "noise" would look like, ergo open to interpretation? for all we know the horsehead nebula could look like great aunt mable's left armpit but the person that wronte the computer software says it looks like a horsehead!!

If there is anyone suitable edumacated that could explain this in plain english I would be greatly interested (i tried watching brian cox but end up with a sore head!!!)

 

[Eric The Viking]

I'll try: They're using bits of the electromagnetic spectrum we don't see as visible light - infra-red and radio wavelengths, mainly. The apparatus doesn't need to look like an optical telescope, but it serves the same function. Instead of a CCD sensor block (wot you get in a digital camera) they assemble the image with a computer. It's still pixellated in a similar fashion. In fact some infra-red arrangements do use a CCD array.

So it's not cheating, any more than modern digital photography techniques are cheating. In fact it lets us humans see far more of the structures than we otherwise would, which has to be a good thing.

E.

PS: Steve, thanks for posting these - really great images.

 

[bugbear]

Awesome pictures....but something confuddleises me....the massive great big telescopes these days that look into deep space...they are not telescopes as we would know them but are "radio" telescopes...looking at "noise" and interpreting the noise into pictures...so are the pictures we see of say the horsehead nebula an actual picture of a computer rendition of what the "noise" would look like, ergo open to interpretation? for all we know the horsehead nebula could look like great aunt mable's left armpit but the person that wronte the computer software says it looks like a horsehead!!

If there is anyone suitable edumacated that could explain this in plain english I would be greatly interested (i tried watching brian cox but end up with a sore head!!!)

Do you mean "noise" as in random data or "noise" as in something detectable with the ear?

Making an image from the former is impossible, from the latter quite simple.

BugBear

 

[Dee J]

Noise isn't really a useful word here - any more than calling the light input into our eyes noise. In both cases its electromagnetic radiation with direction, intensity and frequency spectrum. For visible light our brains resolve the input into what we each consider as our version of reality. This is interpreted by our cultural knowledge into recognizable objects. Human beings are very good pattern recognisers - and a partial view of an object from an un-familiar angle can still be understood. For non visible spectrum detected by a radio telescope, some of this interpreting of data is achieved in the computer. Yes it is subjective - the programmers choice of filtering and assembling the received data will affect the final result - similar in a way to an artists interpretation of a landscape.
Dee