APOD: The Seahorse of the Large Magellanic... (2014 Nov 30)

[APOD Robot]

The Seahorse of the Large Magellanic Cloud

Explanation: It may look like a grazing seahorse, but the dark object toward the image right is actually a pillar of smoky dust about 20 light years long. The curiously-shaped dust structure occurs in our neighboring Large Magellanic Cloud, in a star forming region very near the expansive Tarantula Nebula. The energetic nebula is creating a star cluster, NGC 2074, whose center is visible just off the top of the image in the direction of the neck of the seahorse. The representative color image was taken in 2008 by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in honor of Hubble's 100,000th trip around the Earth. As young stars in the cluster form, their light and winds will slowly erode the dust pillars away over the next million years.

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[ta152h0]

20 light years of dust ? if I was driving my TTS thru that stuff, would it sandblast my window ? oh yes, TTS stands for Telescope Tranportation System. I recall there was also reported that I remember , there is a giant bubble of water floating around " out there ".

[hoohaw]

It might be nice to post the same picture in black-and-white (as a roll-over), to remind us all of what astronomical photographs always used to always look like. Up until about what, 20 years ago? or less? There was a phase of maybe five years when some dude (in Australia, I think) started generating the first COLOR astronomical photographs: it was exciting! A younger generation no doubt has no memory of that.

[Chris Peterson]

It might be nice to post the same picture in black-and-white (as a roll-over), to remind us all of what astronomical photographs always used to always look like. Up until about what, 20 years ago? or less? There was a phase of maybe five years when some dude (in Australia, I think) started generating the first COLOR astronomical photographs: it was exciting! A younger generation no doubt has no memory of that.

There have been color images of astronomical objects for a lot longer than 20 years!

You're probably thinking of David Malin, who generated some of the best film astroimages back then by using separate images made on B&W film through different filters- the same way good CCD images are made today. Those images were much better than the images other astrophotographers were making using color emulsions. Of course, no film image ever made comes close to what is possible using electronic sensors today. That's been a revolution of about the past 20 years.

[Chris Peterson]

20 light years of dust ? if I was driving my TTS thru that stuff, would it sandblast my window ?

Well, we'd call that dusty region an extremely hard vacuum. To damage your TTS, you'd need to spend thousands of years driving across all 20 light years at a high velocity. You wouldn't even know you were in a dusty region without using instruments.

[NGC3314]

The first (widely-reproduced, at any rate) color pictures of deep-sky objects came from the work of photo expert William Miller with several of the scientists at Mt. Wilson at Palomar in the late 1950s, rating an article in Life magazine. In the 1960s, some of the astronomers up the coast at Lick Observatory got notable results with color emulsions and careful treatment of bright nebulae. In the 1970s, David Malin at the Anglo-Australian Observatory made the technique of combining multiple images on photographic plates through different filters into color products, mastering a very finicky process.

The next breakthrough was widespread digital treatment of images, initially scanned photographic plates and later digital imagers (first modified TV cameras, then solid-state chips), while software and hardware allowed display of color composite images from multiple files.. By 1980 there were a handful of astronomical sites where this could be done - JPL, Kitt Peak, Groningen... but the best way to save the results was still to take a picture of the computer monitor (or scan that output straight onto film). GIF, JPEG, etc. had yet to be invented in the days before networks became widely usable. Then workstations with color monitors proliferated. and with first widespread Internet and eventually WWW, color-composite images could escape into the wider world.

[Czerno o]

Today's is one of the most aesthetically pleasing images
APOD has given us to contemplate ! Beats many a picture
by famous painters in any museum on the planet !

A huge wow ! and compliments to the photographer, not just
for his astronomic but, equally, artistic sense ! Beauty is there
to see, only to him who can seize it.

[hoohaw]

Today's is one of the most aesthetically pleasing images
APOD has given us to contemplate ! Beats many a picture
by famous painters in any museum on the planet !

Since no human or other creature had EVER seen these things until very recently indeed, how can it possibly be that our brains, the product of evolution, report them to be "aesthetically pleasing?" And I mean almost all of them, I can only recall one or two astronomical photos I thought looked ugly.

[bystander]

A huge wow ! and compliments to the photographer,

The photographer was the Hubble Space Telescope.

[Chris Peterson]

A huge wow ! and compliments to the photographer,

The photographer was the Hubble Space Telescope.

No, the camera was the HST. The photographer was Mario Livio (or he and his colleagues).

[BillBixby]

TTS stands for Telescope Tranportation System. I recall there was also reported that I remember , there is a giant bubble of water floating around " out there ".

I hope your TTS also comes with wiper blades for that water bubble

Also, I wish all of you a happy 'this time of year' and clear skies (and lots of lightly rainy days in Southern Calif.)

I have not seen anything from LocalColor or Nefer in a fairly long time. Anybody who could update?

Bll

[Boomer12k]

Wonderful!!!!

:---[===] *

[DavidLeodis]

The predictions brought up through the "next million years" link are fascinating. Sad though to hear that "600 million Tidal acceleration moves the Moon far enough from Earth that total solar eclipses are no longer possible" . Not that there will be that much time to miss them though as "800 million Carbon dioxide levels fall to the point at which C4 photosynthesis is no longer possible. Free oxygen and ozone disappear from the atmosphere. Multicellular life dies out". No doubt the dolphins will have already said "So long and thanks for all the " (OK, that smiley is 'fishy' not 'fish').

PS. I find it remarkable that this image reportedly taken on August 10 2008 was released on August 11 2008.

[LocalColor]

Another "wow" image from the Hubble team! And great explainations. I was just sitting here wondering how "wind" could "blow" in a vacuum and there was a link provided by APOD with the answer.

Still in a "food coma" from our feast day.

[geckzilla]

A huge wow ! and compliments to the photographer,

The photographer was the Hubble Space Telescope.

No, the camera was the HST. The photographer was Mario Livio (or he and his colleagues).

Yeah, it's very difficult to credit individuals for Hubble's images. Livio was the PI but who actually wrote the commands and uploaded them? Who was babysitting the telescope while it was actually collecting the data? And then there would seem to be several people contributing to the processing of the image. STScI is full of wonderful people and few of them ever take all the credit they deserve.

[starsurfer]

Yeah, it's very difficult to credit individuals for Hubble's images. Livio was the PI but who actually wrote the commands and uploaded them? Who was babysitting the telescope while it was actually collecting the data? And then there would seem to be several people contributing to the processing of the image. STScI is full of wonderful people and few of them ever take all the credit they deserve.

A few names that come to mind are Lisa Frattare and Zolt Levay.