Best images from Hubble: Prepare to be amazed

epictring

After looking at these real photos, you realise more and more that everything is possible - even beyond our wildest dreams.

http://photos.uk.msn.com/slideshow/photos/hubble-space-telescope-images/2x7z7t6k#1

Wizard

I love the idea of (left brain) science producing (right brain) art.
A very good application of science.
?

lindsmuse

These are so amazing. I think the only way to do them justice for viewing pleasure is to have a gallery with perspex / glass walls with these images encased - and lit up - huge. Don't know how else. Maybe projected.

I have huge difficulty just trying to picture the earth going round the sun - trying to visualize it as if earth is a spaceship and I had that vantage point. Just get up in the morning - there's the sun on the horison - and in the evening - ok - there it is on the other horison. Let's not even get to trying to fit the moon into this picture ☹ I just feel it would help a lot with visualising in general if I could just get this right. I've looked for this type of thing but all you get are little diagrams.

Thanks for posting!

DaFiz

Truly amazing ?

Attila

Jaa these are fantastic !!!!!

Then there is Elon Musk who is planning to put a village on mars
And he is serious about this just follow is roadmap on twitter

I see your problem Linda it's simple really the sun is static or geo stationary and imagine that at midday
in summer you are upside down relative to the sun and gravity keeps you from falling towards the sun

Of course the earth also spins which gives you day and night

Might help a bit

lindsmuse

That helps but now I feel a bit dizzy ? (Lindsey)

Neon-Gecko

Wow those are truly amazing images. ??? Anyone know if they have been retouched to be that colourful, or is that what it really looks like? Just kinda curious.

Warren

Neon Gecko wrote Wow those are truly amazing images. ??? Anyone know if they have been retouched to be that colourful, or is that what it really looks like? Just kinda curious.

I wondered the same myself when I was younger, and the answer is a little complicated:

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/

In short: the colours are added in when the images are composited together.

Tokai-SA

My son sent me this link earlier today...how about a planet made of diamond and graphite? 8)

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/01/exo-planet-with-a-chemistry-vastly-different-than-earth-a-surface-of-graphite-and-diamond.html

wirt

This universe/science/astronomy stuff always gives me a warm, happy feeling in the pit of my stomache in a Carl Sagan-ish kinda way...

If I might add to the awesome already on this thread:
http://www.solarsystemscope.com/ Since Lindsmuse said something about a model, this is one of the better ones to be found. (Set view to geocentric and zoom in to earth, set planets and distances to scale in settings, then zoom out really, really slowly for the ultimate in mindf***ingness)

The sheer scale of it all always blew my mind. If you would imagine the diameter of the sun to be about 8cm's, about the same as a teacup, then the earth would be a full 9 meters away from that little sun. If the sun was really 8cm's in diameter, that would be a 172,500,00,000th of it's true size, and the Earth is a dot the size of the head of a pin, 0.07mm in diameter. Now imagine the head of a pin revolving around a teacup 9 meters away. The outer edges of this solar system is a full 432m beyond this miniture Earth. Pretty baffling, right? But check this out: Our little solar system is not alone, is it? The inhabitants of mini-Earth finally invent astronomy, telescopes, trigonometry and advanced calculus and start investigating the heavens. Eventually they find closest star outside of their little solar system and call it "Proxima Centauri". The inhabitants of the little 8cm Earth are not happy, though, their nearest neighbouring system lies a staggering 2,325 kilometers away, a little less than the distance from Cape Town to Harare for the people living on something indistinguishable from a mote of dust. More than 258333 times further away than they are from their own little sun.

And if that doesn't blow your mind:

That video puts a tear in my eye every damned time, no lies.

And finally, a bit of Neil deGrasse Tyson.

shaundtsl

Very nice, thanks for posting ?

Wizard

Brilliant references Wirt.
Thanked.

BMU

Is it just me, or can one actually SEE the gravity lensing around this one? I'm going to pretend that's it and proceed to be very highly excited. Damn that's cool. Space bends people! It really bends, it's mind blowing.

Wizard

BMU wrote Is it just me, or can one actually SEE the gravity lensing around this one? I'm going to pretend that's it and proceed to be very highly excited. Damn that's cool. Space bends people! It really bends, it's mind blowing.

I was really excited when I first actually looked at Mercury though binoculars.
Because it isn't where Newton says it should be.
It's where Einstein says it should be.
In a slightly different place and time because the mass of the sun has actually curved space and visibly affected the planet closest to it.

aja

Want to blow your bind some more?

http://scaleofuniverse.com/

Mannemarak

...scientifically, we are an 'accident', right amount of everything at the correct time. On the other side of that coin, the shear scale of everything suggest that we CANNOT be alone.

...religiously, what is the point of all the other places if it is just us...why build a 20 story mansion if you are a single person that needs no more than 3 or 4 rooms.

I do not want to go into any discussion here to get anyone upset, everyone can think to themselves what they want, those pics made me think...

aja

Mannemarak wrote ...scientifically, we are an 'accident', right amount of everything at the correct time. On the other side of that coin, the shear scale of everything suggest that we CANNOT be alone.

...religiously, what is the point of all the other places if it is just us...why build a 20 story mansion if you are a single person that needs no more than 3 or 4 rooms.

I do not want to go into any discussion here to get anyone upset, everyone can think to themselves what they want, those pics made me think...

You are thinking too much about scale and size.

Read up about concepts of space-time and how it can bend. All of a sudden it doesn't matter how big or small the universe is; using logical deduction type methods to justify certain things just doesn't apply anymore.

Just a quick example - if you travel at the speed of light, time stands still - granted most people know that by now. Well think about it some more - if time doesn't exist, distances shrink down to a point. So perhaps photons in a light beam do not even realize that the universe is anything other than a tiny one dimensional speck of reality.

ezietsman

BMU wrote Is it just me, or can one actually SEE the gravity lensing around this one? I'm going to pretend that's it and proceed to be very highly excited. Damn that's cool. Space bends people! It really bends, it's mind blowing.

I don't think that one is real. We have only been able to image the disks around supermassive black holes. However, gravitational lensing CAN be seen in images.

The little arcs are images of distant galaxies being lensed by the cluster of galaxies you can see here.

In other news, the Kepler mission's current estimates gives the milky way alone more than 100 000 000 000 planets and probably more than 1 000 000 000 earth-sized ones.

We are not alone.

aja

ez wrote
In other news, the Kepler mission's current estimates gives the milky way alone more than 100 000 000 000 planets and probably more than 1 000 000 000 earth-sized ones.

We are not alone.

I do not see the link...

If you are living in a vast desert and you have not seen any traces of any other human at all, would you suddenly say: "Well, I am here alone and I have no evidence to support that there are any other people in this desert, but it is really big so therefore there must be other people in this big desert as well."

Using a logical argument based on fuzzy information does not necessarily lead to a correct solution. Often, the solution is not logical. This type of thinking gets us into trouble all the time, for example see "aether"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether

Warren

aja wrote
I do not see the link...

If you are living in a vast desert and you have not seen any traces of any other human at all, would you suddenly say: "Well, I am here alone and I have no evidence to support that there are any other people in this desert, but it is really big so therefore there must be other people in this big desert as well."

Add to that the fact that humankind's entire existence so far is a tiny spec on the timeline of the history of the universe. Even if there is life elsewhere, to co-evolve at similar enough points on that timeline to actually have the opportunity to meet (assuming we find some way to cross vast distances)...who knows?

Still, I like to think there is other life out there, and there is as good a chance as not. I'm too much of a sci-fi geek to want to believe otherwise ?