384mb panoramic view of the Orion Nebula
January 13, 2006 11:51 PM   Subscribe

Orion Nebula in very high resolution gorgeous
posted by obeygiant (30 comments total)
 
take a look
posted by obeygiant at 11:51 PM on January 13, 2006


Here's a smaller version to preview.
posted by null terminated at 12:02 AM on January 14, 2006


Breathtaking.
posted by exlotuseater at 12:06 AM on January 14, 2006


Breathtaking is exactly the right word. Wow.
posted by greycap at 12:57 AM on January 14, 2006


Looks like a composite to me - some parts are sharper than others and the aperture bars on the stars are at at least two distinct angles.
posted by polyglot at 1:30 AM on January 14, 2006


"This extensive study took 105 Hubble orbits to complete. All imaging instruments aboard the telescope – the ACS, Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, and Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer – were used simultaneously to study the nebula. The ACS mosaic covers approximately the apparent angular size of the full moon."

Beautiful stuff. Also I love the fact the image is so big they have to put a warning on it.
posted by invisible_al at 2:01 AM on January 14, 2006


That's ... crazy. Awesome, thanks!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 2:03 AM on January 14, 2006


You people won't believe it, but if you zoom in and look below and right of the center of the image, you can just make out a couple of attack ships on fire. They're just tiny points of light, though, and very hard to distinguish from the light of the surrounding nebula—like tears in rain.
posted by The Tensor at 2:16 AM on January 14, 2006


Very beautiful—thank you.
posted by misteraitch at 2:30 AM on January 14, 2006


For the record, I just broke my eyes looking at hundreds of incredibly high-res photos at the Hubble Gallery...

Try looking at this (1mb) without crying, for one reason or another. jesus!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 2:31 AM on January 14, 2006


It belongs in a museum.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 3:06 AM on January 14, 2006


very nice
posted by pyramid termite at 5:39 AM on January 14, 2006


Looks like a composite to me

Orian Nebula ACS Mosiac
posted by melt away at 5:47 AM on January 14, 2006


Mosaic even...
posted by melt away at 5:48 AM on January 14, 2006


/me is a dumbass today.
posted by polyglot at 6:30 AM on January 14, 2006


My hard drive is already slowly dying, and trying to view that 23Mb image in Paint Shop Pro locked it up.
posted by alumshubby at 6:40 AM on January 14, 2006


I recall reading in the LA TImes a couple of years ago (around 2003?) that NASA has artists touch up the orginal Hubble pictures by adding colours to otherwise black and white photos. I can't seem to find that article again, so I could just be dreaming this up. Has anyone else heard about this? But in any case, this picture is still pretty to look at.
posted by reformedjerk at 6:53 AM on January 14, 2006


Info on the colours.
posted by Acey at 7:17 AM on January 14, 2006


aye, that it is.
[pretty, that is]
posted by Busithoth at 7:39 AM on January 14, 2006


Great photo, thanks.

Here's my favorite - the Hubble Deep Field:
Half size image 350kb

The Hubble Deep Field image covers a speck of the sky only about the width of a dime 75 feet away. Gazing into this small field, Hubble uncovered a bewildering assortment of at least 1,500 galaxies at various stages of evolution.

Almost every object in the photo is a galaxy.

From the Hubble Deep Field site.
posted by jjj606 at 7:58 AM on January 14, 2006


Breathtaking.
posted by Skygazer at 8:16 AM on January 14, 2006


wow...that is jawdropping!
thank you
posted by Flamingoroad at 8:52 AM on January 14, 2006


It belongs in a museum.
No Dr. Hoverboards... you belong in a museum!


It's fantastic renditions of our little spec of the universe which helps make me realize (that I can't realize) just how big (just the) visible universe is.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 10:23 AM on January 14, 2006


I'll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space. Right?
posted by todbot at 11:07 AM on January 14, 2006


That is the most beautiful picture I've ever seen. Thanks!
posted by Meagan at 11:38 AM on January 14, 2006


Check out this wide-field view of the entire constellation of Orion.
Click on it for a much larger version. This has to be one of my all time favorite works of an amateur astronomer.

If you have some binocculars or a small telescope (and a clear night), point it at the middle "star" in Orion's sword (M42). You'll see that it is actually several stars surrounded by a beautiful ghostly grey-blue glow. This is the Great Orion Nebula. The reds and violets you see in photographs are only possible in long exposures and not to our relatively insensitive eyes.

Yes, you can see it even in a light-polluted city but the darker the better...
posted by ae4rv at 11:41 AM on January 14, 2006


Beautiful. (detail)
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 12:14 PM on January 14, 2006


very cool
posted by Smedleyman at 1:19 PM on January 14, 2006


The Tensor, I think it was actually supposed to be Orion the constellation, not the nebula. The constellation has "shoulders", while the nebula does not.

/pedant

Todbot, I just finished re-reading Contact. What a beautiful novel.

...

In this specific image, is it false colors or not? I was a little (only a little) disappointed when I found out the "Pillars of Creation" image was done with false colors.
...

I just did some observing last night. Saw Jupiter and its moons for the first time -- totally cool. Orion had already set by the time I got up on the roof, but I saw M42 the last time I went up. It really is beautiful.

My favorite, though, is still the Pleiades.
posted by jiawen at 1:47 PM on January 14, 2006


I can see the Orion nebula pretty easily in my 10x50 binoculars, even from urban sites.

There are some really large (i.e., nearby) nebulae out there. The North America nebula, in the constellation of Cygnus, covers a patch of sky ten times the size of the full moon. It's barely visible in binoculars (telescopes have too small a field of view) from remote (dark) viewing sites. Because our eyes are relatively insensitive to its red light, the only way to really see it is by photography.

Interestingly, nebulae don't get easier to see when you get closer to them, despite what you see on Star Trek. If you get in your spaceship and move closer to the nebula, the light intensity grows (proportional to the square of the distance), but the apparent size of the object increases (proportional to the square of the distance) and the two effects cancel each other.
posted by neuron at 2:04 PM on January 14, 2006


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