MetaFilter posts tagged with astronomy and photography

Please Prepare For Landing

msalt — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:33:36 -0800

1,512 high-resolution images of Mars from the viewpoint of an airplane passenger. Previous photos: 1 2 3

Happy 40th anniversary, mankind.

sexyrobot — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:01:13 -0800

Moon Landing Tapes Found! All the videos you've seen of the first moon landing are crap. Remember, back in the day, video cameras and recorders were two different things. So it went like this: camera on moon sends footage to Australia, where it's recorded on tape (and then those tapes were lost), then downsized onto a smaller monitor, which is filmed by another video camera, uploaded to satellite, and disseminated around the world. America watches it on TV, cheers. Some of this footage is filmed off of a television onto 16mm film. This is what goes into the national archives. Crap. So, the original tapes have been found (spoiler: they never left Australia). So what, right? How good could they be, recorded back in the late 60's and all? Pretty darn good, apparently...seems recording heads were much better than the output available at the time (like playing a Blu-Ray disc on a B&W TV), and several recent projects have shown that it's possible to extract very high resolution data from these old analog tapes. How hi-rez? High enough to see Neil Armstrong's nipples get hard. (be sure to click on that picture) So when can we see this amazing footage? Probably soon.

Star light, star bright, how many stars can I see tonight?

filthy light thief — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 23:51:10 -0800

"The arc of the Milky Way seen from a truly dark location is part of our planet's natural heritage," said Connie Walker, and astronomer from the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. Yet "more than one fifth of the world population, two thirds of the U.S. population and one half of the European Union population have already lost naked eye visibility of the Milky Way." In these areas, people are effectively living in perennial moonlight. They rarely realize it because they still experience the sky to be brighter under a full moon than under new moon conditions. "Reducing the number of lights on at night could help conserve energy, protect wildlife and benefit human health," astronomer Malcolm Smith of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. One study found an increased risk of breast cancer for women living in areas with the most light pollution (abstract). Some communities are embracing their dark skies, such as the New Zealand community of Tekapo, possibly home to first "Starlight Reserve," waiting on UNESCO's official approval. Not sure where to look in the vast night sky? Follow some guidelines, or check the view in Chile, Queensland, Australia, or Texas.

Astronomy North

gman — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:14:54 -0800

Time lapse photography videos and pictures of the Aurora Borealis. From Astronomy North.

Mammoth Stars

homunculus — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:19:14 -0800

WR 25 And Tr16-244: Previously Unseen Mammoth Stars Get The Hubble Treatment.

Not the Ford Galaxy

Kronos_to_Earth — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:42:12 -0800

Five years and 800,000 images went into producing a 4 gigapixel mosaic image of the galactic plane, which when printed out is 180 feet long. But it has been made browser-sized by GLIMPSE, the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire, the research group which, along with MIPSGAL, created the image: A Glimpse of the Milky Way.

Astronomy Pictures

homunculus — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 15:34:33 -0800

Bad Astronomy's Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2007.

Billions and Billions

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 00:38:08 -0800

Billions and Billions astrophotography CCD gallery / film gallery / equipment / tutorials

The Dance of the Galilean Satellites

dkg — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 21:43:11 -0800

Time lapse animations of planets and satellites. See what an amateur digital astrophotographer could do a decade ago. This is what the animated gif was designed to do.

Wikisky - Online Starmap and Wiki

Jimbob — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 23:30:51 -0800

It's like Google Maps...for space. Wikisky is a draggable, zoomable, web-based star map. And if you click on a star or other object, it brings up a page with all the information you could want on it, including recent articles and astrophotos that contain that object. And it does lots more. Go explore.

Exterior Decorator

hortense — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 23:25:14 -0800

Missouri Skies: The show me state .

Comet Machholz and the Comet Hunters

spock — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 09:09:50 -0800

"Naked Eye" Comet Machholz (binoculars recommended) nears maximum brightness in the coming days ( starchart here and here). How to photograph a comet and other objects. The story of its discovery (his 10th). Comet hunters are an interesting breed. Now you can discover comets from your 'puter with SOHO imagery. If stargazing interests you, you may also like the Wunderground astronomy web application (based on U.S. zip codes).

Chasing Venus

carter — Sun, 04 Apr 2004 07:34:57 -0800

Chasing Venus Transits of Venus occur every 130 years or so when Venus can be observed passing across the face of the sun. Chasing Venus is an online exhibition by Smithsonian Institution Libraries that tells the story of how the transit has been observed since the 17th century, with early observations in England, illustrated accounts of expeditions by 18th century astronomers to various parts of the world, and early uses of photography to record observations in the 19th century. Includes links to animations of transits reconstructed from Victorian photographs, and details of a lecture series on Thursdays in April and May (first one April 8). The first transit since 1882 is this year.

Spitzer Space Telescope

homunculus — Sat, 20 Dec 2003 00:33:46 -0800

The first images from the Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly known as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility and renamed after astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer, Jr., were released on Thursday. Launched on August 25, it obtains images by detecting the infrared energy radiated by objects in space, and it will drift behind the Earth as the planet orbits the sun.

The Best of Hubble

reverendX — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 12:02:20 -0800

The Best of Hubble Its mission will end in 2010. Four years later it will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up. Many astronomers are calling for Hubble to be refurbished and its mission extended to 2020. Here are some of it's best pictures.

planetary photojournal

crunchland — Tue, 18 Nov 2003 07:43:18 -0800

planetary photojournal

My God, it's full of stars!

Irontom — Fri, 10 Oct 2003 05:41:54 -0800

Breathtaking Hubble picture of the Sombrero Galaxy (also identified as M104). The Hubble Heritage team took the original images during May and June of this year using the Advanced Camera for Surveys and multiple color filters. They then stitched 6 images together to make the final composite image.

Earth from Mars

aladfar — Thu, 22 May 2003 12:21:11 -0800

Pale Blue Dot: The Earth and Moon as photographed from Mars. Just in case you needed a bit of perspective.

2MASS

onhazier — Fri, 28 Mar 2003 12:38:06 -0800

The Two Micron All Sky Survey at IPAC has been completed after 4 years and 5 million images. Detailed infrared images have been mapped into beautiful false color images. Be sure to check out the 2MASS home page at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. So, what's your favorite astronomy related site or image? (via CNN)

Coolest sun picture ever

notsnot — Fri, 15 Nov 2002 13:21:12 -0800

Coolest sun picture ever - sunspot closeup... The Swedish Institute for Solar Physics web site has some other cool pictures. (As an aside, I wonder what equivalent shutter speed, aperture, and focal length would be?)

quercus — Tue, 06 Aug 2002 14:01:33 -0800

A very well designed site on the Analemma. Don't be scared off by the math, as there are excellent diagrams and quicktime movies on this difficult to visualize phenomena. Difficult, but not impossible, to photograph (probably less than 10 photos are in existence) Ulrich Bienert came close, and has a gallery and some tips if you're so inclined.

crasspastor — Tue, 11 Sep 2001 18:00:41 -0800

Reflections on a Mote of Dust "We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam." Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"

lagado — Tue, 17 Jul 2001 05:28:43 -0800

A neat use for webcams, digital astronomy.
via APOD

Steven Den Beste — Wed, 20 Dec 2000 22:21:27 -0800

The stars in the core of our galaxy are moving damned fast. [more]

lagado — Mon, 27 Nov 2000 04:43:52 -0800

The World at Night. This amazing image (warning 500K) is actually a composite of hundreds of pictures made by the orbiting DMSP satellites over regions of the world at night. You can clearly see the Nile river, Hong Kong, Hawaii and probably, if you look close enough, the town you are in right now. From Astronomy Picture of the Day