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You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Pretty Pictures

Pretty Pictures

by John Cole|  June 11, 200512:31 pm| 12 Comments

This post is in: Science & Technology

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If you have the time, make sure you check out all the new Hubble pictures, which are just spectacular.

Make sure you check out the the wallpapers. I just switched from “Maelstrom of Star Birth,” which I had for a year, to the “Dying Star Creates Fantasy-like Sculpture of Gas and Dust.”

Magnificent is exactly the right word. In these whacky times of fiscal conservatives spending gazillions of dollars on, well, you name it, I have no problem spending a couple billion on this baby.

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12Comments

  1. 1.

    Josh

    June 11, 2005 at 1:41 pm

    No I don’t have time.

    Ok let’s check them out.

    http://hubblesite.org/gallery/wallpaper/pr2004027a/1280_wallpaper

    OOOOOOOO

  2. 2.

    Robert

    June 11, 2005 at 3:58 pm

    The Helix Nebula has been my wallpaper for the past year or so. Nothing like a great big celestial eye staring at you to make you get back to work.

    http://hubblesite.org/gallery/wallpaper/pr2003011a/

  3. 3.

    CaseyL

    June 11, 2005 at 5:21 pm

    Enjoy them while you can. This Admin is letting Hubble die.

  4. 4.

    Nate

    June 11, 2005 at 5:28 pm

    Casey – not true. NASA has allocated the funds to service Hubble yet again in spite of President Bush’s vision of a manned Mars Mission. I had just posted on this earlier today.

  5. 5.

    mac

    June 12, 2005 at 12:04 am

    John, I’m a huge fan of the Hubble, but it’s time to replace it. Maybe it needs one last repair mission. Maybe. But there’s a much better orbital telescope on the drawing board for 2009. I’d like NASA to focus on that baby instead.

    The Hubble is not such a crucial piece of equipment anymore. Earthbound telescopes are catching up in resolution, using adaptive optics (AO). A newer space scope would push the envelope further.

    It’s not just money that gets spent on Hubble. It’s manpower.

    Facts:
    Ordinary ground-based telescope resolution is 1 arcsecond.
    Hubble resolution is .1 arcsecond.
    Bleeding edge AO resolution is .1-.15 arcsecond.

    So the Hubble is obsolete.

    (References for AO telescopes:
    http://nsosp.nso.edu/ao/AO76.html
    http://medusa.as.arizona.edu/lbtwww/tech/light.htm)

    But the Hubble was indeed a magnificent thing for two decades.

    PS: Bleeding heart liberal speaking. I’m really a huge fan of old-style NASA. (I despise the Space Station.) But the Hubble’s time has come and gone. What would truly be a shame is if they scrapped the plans for the replacement satellite, which is supposed to be an order of magnitude better than the Hubble.

  6. 6.

    mac

    June 12, 2005 at 12:23 am

    John, I’m a huge fan of the Hubble, but it’s time to replace it. Maybe it needs one last repair mission. Maybe. But there’s a much better orbital telescope on the drawing board for 2009. I’d like NASA to focus on that baby instead.

    The Hubble is not such a crucial piece of equipment anymore. Earthbound telescopes are catching up in resolution, using adaptive optics (AO). A newer space scope would push the envelope further.

    It’s not just money that gets spent on Hubble. It’s manpower.

    Facts:
    Ordinary ground-based telescope resolution is 1 arcsecond.
    Hubble resolution is .1 arcsecond.
    Bleeding edge AO resolution is .1-.15 arcsecond.

    So the Hubble is obsolete.

    (References for AO telescopes:
    http://nsosp.nso.edu/ao/AO76.html
    http://medusa.as.arizona.edu/lbtwww/tech/light.htm)

    But the Hubble was indeed a magnificent thing for two decades.

    PS: Bleeding heart liberal speaking. I’m really a huge fan of old-style NASA. (I despise the Space Station.) But the Hubble’s time has come and gone. What would truly be a shame is if they scrapped the plans for the replacement satellite, which is supposed to be an order of magnitude better than the Hubble.

  7. 7.

    John Cole

    June 12, 2005 at 12:24 am

    Mac- I am not beholden to the Hubble. I mean this type of discovery in general. If there is something better, then fire it up and send it out there.

    I am just against ending all of this…

  8. 8.

    mac

    June 12, 2005 at 12:40 am

    Sorry about the double post. I should have read the warning before making my second attempt….

  9. 9.

    Shami

    June 13, 2005 at 3:01 pm

    A response to mac, as someone who has used both the Hubble (HST) and a camera on Gemini with adaptive optics (AO): saying that AO makes HST obsolete is a deep misunderstanding of the situation.

    1. The HST is above the atmosphere, and can study UV wavelengths which are simply not accessible to ground based telescopes, AO or not. (And as an aside, the James Webb, the “successor” to the HST, only does infra-red, not UV and not much visible light.)

    2. AO requires a good guide star (i.e., you know what it looks like, you deform your mirror to get there, and then you see what your faint target looks like), which restricts the field of view to within a few arcminutes of a very restricted subset of stars in the sky. Artificial laser guide stars are nowhere near good enough yet.

    So for the near future, the HST is irreplacable. That said, there are certainly better ways to build future space telescopes – the servicable design has been more trouble than just flying new space telescopes.

  10. 10.

    Kimmitt

    June 14, 2005 at 12:26 pm

    Also, having two really excellent telescopes is better than having one really excellent telescope, for obvious reasons.

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. Project Nothing! says:
    June 11, 2005 at 2:34 pm

    Hubble Telescope is magnificent

    Most recent Hubble Image. Full Res here.
    The Hubble Space Telescope has been one of the most enduring and resounding successes in all of observable science. If you’re ever feeling particularly insignificant, don’t go to that website. …

  2. Middle Earth Journal says:
    June 11, 2005 at 4:57 pm

    Hubble Gallery

    If you want to do some Saturday picture grazing here is a great find from John Cole where you can find great pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope and download images for printing and wallpaper; The Hubble Gallery.

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