Nebulae
http://starbulletin.com/2007/05/17/news/art10x.jpg
From todays Star Bulletin …
There is more to space than meets the eye, a Mauna Kea telescope demonstrated yesterday with the release of a striking image of a normally invisible gas cloud in the Orion Nebula.
Not bad for an installation that, with its 49-foot dish, looks more like a radar site than a telescope.
In announcing the use of the two instruments yesterday, the British-Canadian-Dutch Joint Astronomy Centre, which operates the Maxwell telescope, released images from the Orion Nebula, a dusty, gassy area in the “sword” of the constellation Orion.
They are the first clear images of such a large area of space looking at radiation shorter than radio waves.
The Maxwell astronomers focused on the frequency given off by carbon monoxide, the same gas found in cigarette smoke and car exhaust.
The actual size in space is more amazing. Light starting at the top of the cloud would need 30 years to reach the bottom.
Next, the astronomers made more pictures, each in a slightly different wavelength of submillimeter radiation, depending on whether the CO molecules were moving toward or away from the telescope.
Not a great article, factually incorrect in places, and I wish they would call it the James Clarke Maxwell Telescope or JCMT, but still completely shameless of me to link it here.
UPDATE : Brad points out …
(HARP-B with the ACSIS backend) actually observes 8192 different frequencies simultaneously at 16 positions in space. What actually happened is that the telescope scanned across Orion, collecting data at 8192 frequencies the whole time, and then the resulting data (called a time-series cube) was turned into a spatial/spectral cube. The “slices” are as they described, sampling a discrete frequency for a given region of space.
May 17th, 2007 at 10:08 am
That’s a fantastic image, even in its online-newspaper version.
Your telescope colleagues could get a Flickr account and upload images with custom EXIF data, just for the sake of having the biggest, zoomiest camera. There’s nothing to say the “camera” has to use light :-)
May 17th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Occasionally I receive images that I’d like to upload to Flickr, such as the UKIDDS one on the back of the current UKIRT newsletter which is quite amazing when full size, but am unable to because they haven’t been published.
I’m not currently sure what the procedure is with the JAC in general, however the current UKIDDS procedures seem very restrictive, but I could suggest a Flickr account to the JAC’s outreach, custom EXIF data would be an interesting way of these images being found.
May 18th, 2007 at 7:41 am
You might need to ask Flickr whether their Map feature is for where the photo was taken, or where it is of… they might need bigger maps.
May 18th, 2007 at 8:32 am
When publishing data the coordinates are often published alongside, that allows Astronomers to compare data and point at the same target for further investigation. The longitude and latitude of the observatory can prove useful as depending on which hemisphere you are in affects what can be observed.
As for Flickr needing bigger maps, at ADASS last year Google were there with a variation of GoogleEarth which points outwards, a sort of GoogleSky if you like. I am not sure what purpose they had in mind, other than it is really fucking cool, but I thought it would be nice for some of the software that I develop which involves in part allowing observers to pick targets in the sky for observations.
Your question does show some of the limitations we will come across in the future, where a photo was taken and where it is of are generally considered the same, I wonder in the future if they will continue to be the same.
May 18th, 2007 at 8:37 am
Speaking of GoogleSky, have a look at http://www.wikisky.org/ which will give you some idea of what to expect.
You can read more about GoogleSky here.