Thread: astronomy

Originally Posted by mic-d

Hi Skew, I never heard of being able to download raw data before. How does it work? Can you select the part of the sky you're interested in and what's the advantage/additional attaction over googling the image?

You can select the data sets you're interested in, yes. There's an extremely wide range available. If it has a catalogue number, there are pix available.

The advantage? Well, the telescopes don't send back their data in the form of those pix. They send back what are basically greyscale images that have been taken thru various filters.

Someone takes that data and manipulates it to create those images. Most of the ones people Oooh and Aah over on Google are the pretty ones... which don't necessarily show the features that I'm interested in.

It's a bit like a smorgasbord; you can grab a plate someone has already pre-loaded for you or you can go and select tucker that you really want.

eg. enhancing a UV layer so that newborn stars can be seen more clearly thru dust clouds, while also including an Infrared layer so you can still see the dust cloud structures fairly well.


The whole process is to download the images/filter ranges you want for a particular region, then use something like FITS Liberator to adjust each image so the features you're interested in are most visible. (This is necessary as these images have a far wider range of data than can be shown on a 'puta monitor.)

Each enhanced image is then saved as a TIFF and loaded to photoshop, where it's assigned a colour - and more enhancements done - until you have a final composite that clearly shows the features you're interested in.

Personally, I just like making even more pretty pictures. Especially of Eta Carinae. That place is amazing!

Fascinating. Eta Carinae, even more fascinating! Can you post some of your pics?

Blast, another thing to do!
Thanks Skew.

Originally Posted by mic-d

Any casual astronomers hiding in the forums?

In 1986 I was an Ansett In-flight astronomical commentator for the 6 Halley's comet flights out of Perth - It's a long story . . . .

This guy is one of our students and - nothing to do with his Uni course as he is a Civil Engineering Student - has to be one of the best young astrophotographers in Australia. I regularly post some of his pics in our Departmental Newsletter.

Originally Posted by mic-d

Fascinating. Eta Carinae, even more fascinating! Can you post some of your pics?

Well, here's an example of what I like to do.

Pic 1 is ŋ Carinae in "natural light." ie. using the Red, Green and Blue optical filters. (Not my pic, taken straight of NASA's site. )

I made Pic 2 using the same data set as was used for Pic 1 - I think - but implementing just the UV and Red filters.

See what I mean about showing different detail? The other stars are either much fainter or missing altogether and considering that I scaled the UV layer logarithmically, this means that the energies involved in there are just... WOW!

(Both pix lost a lot of detail from the forum's scaling process... But still, you should get the idea. )

Blast, another thing to do!

Yeah, it gets like that, doesn't it?

Nice work Skewy!

Be good to look at it again in a couple of thousand years.

Thanks Skew, that's interesting stuff. It'd be interesting to see the gamma radiation emission from that. I recall last week(?) watching Stephen Hawking talking about gamma ray bursts from super nova and the image of Eta carinae reminded me of the show.

First got interested in the sky when in scouts. Went down to the local footy/cricket ground with a map of the sky and located as many constellations as we could.

Been to Parkes and Coonabarrabran and a few smaller private 'scopes as well.

At teachers' college was fascinated to watch Saturn rising across the sky when doing one of the elective courses.

Was lucky enough to actually witness the explosion in the Magellanic clouds in 1986,
Just happened to be in the right place at the right time!!

SWMBO says I can't have a " scope AND a lathe!!

Nice photos Skew.!!

Originally Posted by artme

First got interested in the sky when in scouts. Went down to the local footy/cricket ground with a map of the sky and located as many constellations as we could.

The sky must have looked very different back then.

I'm more of an astronomer than a woody sadly. My interest is in variable stars. I have a roll off roof observatory in my paddock with scope and cameras etc. Recently I've been making a spectrograph. There are plenty of resources on the web for astronomy.
Enjoy.

Originally Posted by Terry B

.... I have a roll off roof observatory in my paddock....

Nice shed.

Not quite astronomy per se but if you're interested in radio astronomy and the SKA (Square Kilometer Array) radio telescope, there's a free lecture by Dr Virginia Kilborn going on at the Ballarat Observatory on Sat 25th June from 6pm-10:30pm

Coming events
Starry Winter Nights Festival - Listening to the Night.

Originally Posted by mic-d

The sky must have looked very different back then.

Enough of that young Mic!!

Just say "Yes, it was clearer."