Starship Asterisk*

Hi, I am work in engineering and love the APOD. But I had a thought the other day. 3D photos can be created to be used with red/blue glasses,etc. They work by taking 2 photos slightly appart in distance and then processing them to appear with the red/blue imagery. As you know it's quite interesting. A good example is the Sept 15, 2007 APOD image of the day, "Iapetus: 3D Equatorial Ridge" http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap070915.html

My suggestion is this. Why don't some astronomers and/or the people in charge of running the hubble space telescope take two identical photos of the Orion nebula and other nearby nebulas and galaxies this way. What we would need to do is take a photo when the earth is farthest to the left in its orbit in-line with the nebula, then wait six months later and take another photo. The two photos will have been taken as far apart as possible, creating the needed distance to allow the perspective needed to create 3D photos of the nebulas and maybe even the closest galaxies. I think doing this would introduce an exciting new chapter in astronomy since we would be able to distinguish 3 dimension structures in the nebulas and galaxies.

I have created a diagram of how it would work, and I can email it to anyone that asks for it.

Let me know what you think, Thanks Chad

chadwick2424 wrote:My suggestion is this. Why don't some astronomers and/or the people in charge of running the hubble space telescope take two identical photos of the Orion nebula and other nearby nebulas and galaxies this way. What we would need to do is take a photo when the earth is farthest to the left in its orbit in-line with the nebula, then wait six months later and take another photo. The two photos will have been taken as far apart as possible, creating the needed distance to allow the perspective needed to create 3D photos of the nebulas and maybe even the closest galaxies.

The size of the Earth's orbit is too small compared with the distance to the Orion nebula to create enough parallax for this. M42 is 412 pc distant, meaning that the parallax will be just a few milliarcseconds.

People have produced 3D star maps the way you describe, but they are synthesized from measurements and exaggerated for an eye spacing much greater than the orbit of the Earth around the Sun.

Its a shame we do not have two Hubble's. One orbiting Earth, and one in formation with Voyager 1.

Even out at the distance of Voyager 1, there just won't be enough parallax. You'd need a sister telescope upwards of a light year away.

Wayne wrote:Even out at the distance of Voyager 1, there just won't be enough parallax. You'd need a sister telescope upwards of a light year away.

And points out nicely, to folk unknowing, just how far away things really are.

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

Mark

mark swain wrote:Its a shame we do not have two Hubble's. One orbiting Earth, and one in formation with Voyager 1.

They could technically do this. I don't see why hubble shouldnt be launched into interstellar space once this massive new telescope (whos name eludes me) is created.

wonderboy wrote:They could technically do this. I don't see why hubble shouldnt be launched into interstellar space once this massive new telescope (whos name eludes me) is created.

Because it would be more expensive and difficult than simply launching a new telescope for that purpose. The HST would need serious boosters carried up to it and attached (and there are no attachment points in the design). It would need all new communications equipment and antennas. It would need a new power source- solar panels wouldn't produce enough power in deep space for its reaction wheel orientation system. And it would need major changes to its orientation system in general, since it currently uses magnetic torquers which interact with the Earth's magnetic field.

Thank you, I shall now shuddup-a-ma-face. I never thought of that. Still it would be a good idea to fire a telescope out into the unknown surely? see what it can send back? Also, with updates in technology, would the telescope be able to stay in communication with earth longer. Finally, could you not put a signal amplifier on it so that we could keep in touch with the voyager ships longer as well?

Rubbish me if you please, i am but an amateur, a keen one at that!

wonderboy wrote:Thank you, I shall now shuddup-a-ma-face. I never thought of that. Still it would be a good idea to fire a telescope out into the unknown surely? see what it can send back? Also, with updates in technology, would the telescope be able to stay in communication with earth longer. Finally, could you not put a signal amplifier on it so that we could keep in touch with the voyager ships longer as well?

We have the technology to stay in communication with a craft at any distance we are able to get it. But I think this would be a low value project in terms of information returned. A slightly different view of our own solar system isn't going to teach us anything new, and as far away as we can reasonably expect to get a space telescope- out around the edge of the Solar System- isn't going to provide a detectably different view of the Universe than we get right here. The most likely benefit would come from extending a parallax measuring baseline, allowing for more precision in our knowledge of the distance of fairly nearby stars. Useful, but probably not worth the expense of a distant space telescope.