I was thinking about Horizon in particular which seems to have been dumbed down dramatically over the years.
Astronomy & Space Exploration
- Thread starter MrMarcello
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I was thinking about Horizon in particular which seems to have been dumbed down dramatically over the years.
T - 9 minutes from this post
Terrible footage.
Can't believe they landed it again
Can't believe they landed it again
2nd of this weekend's double header, launch is scheduled for 9:24 pm UK time today
t-11 minutes
That landing was as smooth as silk. They are getting crazy good at this - Friday/Saturdays slight problem aside
Edit - apparently it looked so smooth because it went wrong. Reached 0 velocity a meter or so above the pad and dropped the rest of the way... The new fins slowing them down more than expected? Or how they are reacting to the weather?
Still another landing.
Edit - apparently it looked so smooth because it went wrong. Reached 0 velocity a meter or so above the pad and dropped the rest of the way... The new fins slowing them down more than expected? Or how they are reacting to the weather?
Still another landing.
A year at Jupiter: Juno has revealed the giant of the Solar System
https://arstechnica.com/science/201...o-has-revealed-the-giant-of-the-solar-system/
Three of the white oval storms known as the “String of Pearls” are visible near the top of the image. Each of the alternating light and dark atmospheric bands is wider than Earth, and rages around Jupiter at hundreds of km per hour.
Close-up of enhanced-color image of Jupiter’s clouds obtained by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.
An iimage of a crescent Jupiter and the iconic Great Red Spot.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft soared directly over Jupiter’s south pole when JunoCam acquired this image on February 2, 2017.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft skimmed the upper wisps of Jupiter’s atmosphere when JunoCam snapped this image on Feb. 2 from an altitude of about 14,500km above the giant planet’s swirling cloudtops.
Jupiter’s south pole from an altitude of 52,000km. The oval features are cyclones, up 1,000km in diameter.
This enhanced-color image of a mysterious dark spot on Jupiter seems to reveal a Jovian “galaxy” of swirling storms.
The face of Jupiter? By rotating the image 180 degrees and orienting it from south up, two white oval storms turn into eyeballs, and the “face” of Jupiter is revealed.
A perijove pass: This sequence of enhanced-color images shows how quickly the viewing geometry changes for NASA's Juno spacecraft as it swoops by Jupiter.
Close-up of enhanced-color image of Jupiter’s clouds obtained by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.
An iimage of a crescent Jupiter and the iconic Great Red Spot.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft soared directly over Jupiter’s south pole when JunoCam acquired this image on February 2, 2017.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft skimmed the upper wisps of Jupiter’s atmosphere when JunoCam snapped this image on Feb. 2 from an altitude of about 14,500km above the giant planet’s swirling cloudtops.
Jupiter’s south pole from an altitude of 52,000km. The oval features are cyclones, up 1,000km in diameter.
This enhanced-color image of a mysterious dark spot on Jupiter seems to reveal a Jovian “galaxy” of swirling storms.
The face of Jupiter? By rotating the image 180 degrees and orienting it from south up, two white oval storms turn into eyeballs, and the “face” of Jupiter is revealed.
A perijove pass: This sequence of enhanced-color images shows how quickly the viewing geometry changes for NASA's Juno spacecraft as it swoops by Jupiter.
https://arstechnica.com/science/201...o-has-revealed-the-giant-of-the-solar-system/
Those photos are seriously breathtaking.
Wow, great photo's there!
Crazy to think that Jupiter, probably more than any other non-Earth celestial body other than the Sun, is the reason that we can exist at all.
We've found many "hot-Jupiters", large Jupiter-like exoplanets orbiting their stars with periods of only days. The prevailing theory of this is that they formed beyond the snow line and migrated inwards, vaporizing the inner planets (or just throwing them out of the solar system). (Although only around 1% of Stars are expected to have hot Jupiters).
Alternatively Jupiter-like planets elsewhere may have formed with eccentric orbits, effectively rendering stable orbits inside the inner solar system impossible. Indeed, everything in our Solar System seems remarkably stable.
Another interesting fact is that three of Jupiter's four largest moons are composed largely of water-ice (Ganymede, Callisto and Europa but not Io). Europa is thought to eject water into space through water-plumes, and Ganymede may have done so too at some point.
Could another solar system have moons of their gas giants seeding each other with life?
We've found many "hot-Jupiters", large Jupiter-like exoplanets orbiting their stars with periods of only days. The prevailing theory of this is that they formed beyond the snow line and migrated inwards, vaporizing the inner planets (or just throwing them out of the solar system). (Although only around 1% of Stars are expected to have hot Jupiters).
Alternatively Jupiter-like planets elsewhere may have formed with eccentric orbits, effectively rendering stable orbits inside the inner solar system impossible. Indeed, everything in our Solar System seems remarkably stable.
Another interesting fact is that three of Jupiter's four largest moons are composed largely of water-ice (Ganymede, Callisto and Europa but not Io). Europa is thought to eject water into space through water-plumes, and Ganymede may have done so too at some point.
Could another solar system have moons of their gas giants seeding each other with life?
I need first and third as a wallpaper. Any higher resolution images?
Nah there isn't, NASA tend to use 1.3mp cameras.
I think if we were to find life in another system it may not be anything (i.e. giant stars, gas planets, etc) like we theorize.
Aren't NASA's photos always way more impressive because they colourise everything? Have they done that here?
Yep, most of the raw images are processed and merged and enhanced before being released (JunoCam is 1600x1200 pixel, IIRC) - adding higher resolution cameras often makes the signal to noise ratio attenuation.
https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/pub/e/downloads/JunoCam_Junos_Outreach_Camera.pdf
The ones from telescopes like Hubble are almost always 8-bit greyscale on the visible spectrum, or the infrared/ultraviolet range in their raw form.
So what prevents real color on these space images? Is it the distance taken? Is it the lens or bit? Is it something simple I'm not considering?
There's nothing preventing real color on space images, to be fair. A lot of them are, in fact, real color images. But by and large, color is useless from a scientific standpoint because of how restrictive the visible part of the EM spectrum is (eg. Hubble goes from near ultraviolet to visible to near infrared - for heat signatures, and others can study radio for FRBs or gamma wavelengths for things like supernovae or pulsars). Most of the useful information lies beyond the visible spectrum - in terms of detailing the composition and structure and thermal signature of objects (like selective absorption of a broad range wavelengths in Fraunhofer lines). Something like maybe this in mid-infrared for NGC 4772:
The transmission of that data is priority business, and you can easily use RGB speckled filter to then separate the colors or remove image artifacts and make them fit for average human consumption (that filtering using a ~20 million color palette leads to loss of information because you're putting patches over a lot of important non-optical stuff). Plus, a lot of imagery in enhanced further in terms of richness of the color for space-porn effect.
eg. This will allow you to study the flow of heat and atmospheric fluids on earth (in contrast with normal imagery - that looks pretty, but doesn't convey that much):
The above is a pretty good description but in short the objects are too far away and they don't really have vivid colours in real life. Scientists have to open the lens for a long time with specific filters to soak up as much light as possible to create usable images.
If you bought a decent amateur telescope for a few thousand pounds the images you could see of nearby galaxies would be pretty bland too until you edited them. Even Hubble sees the same thing (forgetting the non visible spectrums), just much further away.
When I first read about it, it was suggested that the added colour makes them more appealing and dramatic than the reality, which I guess garners much interest in space and NASA from the general public.
First question, how useful is colour?
If we are looking at an image taken in the infra-red, which is arguably one of the most useful wavelengths to be looking at the universe, then the only way to convey that information at all is by colourising it. Human-visible wavelengths only show us a fraction of what is really there.
Second question, how do humans see colour?
Like a computer, we see in RGB. We have little cones that detect red, green and blue light.
https://www.livescience.com/32559-why-do-we-see-in-color.html
How could be replicate this with a telescope? Well digital cameras simply split the light into three sensors, each with a red, green and blue filter. Not unlike our eyes! Then the picture is rebuilt afterwards.
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cameras-photography/digital/digital-camera4.htm
So why don't we do this on telescopes? We would be dividing the already incredibly faint light into three, and requiring three times as many sensors! One telescope is expensive enough!
So does that mean space telescopes can't see colour at all? Well, no actually, what they do instead is take the same photo three times, each with a different filter!
So why aren't space telescopes not in colour? - They are. Sometimes.
You've put an incredibly sensitive telescope and trained on a tiny section of the sky, looking for the faintest objects imaginable. The telescope might stay trained on that patch of sky for months; the Hubble Ultra Deep Field photos took place between September and December 2004, with each individual photo taking around 20 minutes, using four different filters. (The whole time the telescope is also orbiting the Earth)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra-Deep_Field
Those filters were within the visible colour spectrum
https://science-edu.larc.nasa.gov/EDDOCS/Wavelengths_for_Colors.html
Hubble then, can definitely produce true-colour pretty pictures.
Last question, will JWST be able to see visible colours?
No. And many future telescopes might not either. Infra-red is (hopefully) far more useful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
But one final awesome reason to look for objects in the infra-red
If there is a completed Dyson Sphere, it would be giving off huge amounts of infra-red radiation (as waste heat). If we suddenly find a star that pretty much only gives off light in the infra-red... we best start working on those viruses (War of the World / Independence Day)
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So, for a human traveling through space, our eyes would see color as we see on Earth?
I'm fairly certain distance would affect what the eye sees but per say at what distance would the human eye see the color variations and whatnot.
I'm fairly certain distance would affect what the eye sees but per say at what distance would the human eye see the color variations and whatnot.
Yep, go to a remote location on a clear night, and look upwards. That's exactly how space will look like because we are space, and you won't be able to ascertain the color variations of remote stellar constructs for the most part (apart from prominent stuff like the Sagittarius A* powered Galactic Center of the Milky Way) because the same rules will be applied.
With regards to the distances involved and color variations, there's no standard answer for that because it will vary with the relative luminosity and size of the objects. You'll have to get really close for most of the stuff (planets and stars - from smaller ones to even hypergiants), unless they're incredibly large and very, very bright (magnitude of several light-years: like quasars because of the surrounding galactic nucleus, and supernovae and hypernovae, and nebulae with massive gas clouds), or you enter extremely dense stellar nurseries where things are closer together and there's incredible chemical variance in clusters. For the most part, it'll be really bland because the distances involved are absurd, and space is not only vast, but remarkably empty (less than ~0.000000000000000000005% of the universe contains known matter).
eg. Even at light speed, with a naked eye - it will take more than 100 years to progressively go from image 1 to image 2 - and then more than 100 years to go from image 2 to image 3 - all the way up to image 7 for the closest nebula (M42):
Size comparison of the Red Spot with Earth:
That's just utterly magnificent isn't it?
I often wonder if we'd be any further along had the space race continued onwards at the same pace it did before the moon landings but I certainly believe we'd be more in love with space than it seems we are nowadays.
Just glad that we get to see stuff like this because it's wondrous beyond belief. Beautiful.
I often wonder if we'd be any further along had the space race continued onwards at the same pace it did before the moon landings but I certainly believe we'd be more in love with space than it seems we are nowadays.
Just glad that we get to see stuff like this because it's wondrous beyond belief. Beautiful.
Two ways to look at it.
Had the space race continued we would undoubtedly have gone beyond a few simple moon landings.
But had there never been a moon race the US would have carried on from the X15/X20 programmes and we would likely have much more capable spacecraft than the fairly rudimentary rockets we have now.
Astonishing. Breathtaking.
2 years 'til the 50th
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-...can-asks-nasa-if-civilisation-on-mars-existed
Asking the important questions
Asking the important questions
How big is that supposed to be?