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Deepest image of the universe ever taken in visible light! (pg. 2)
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| fr0st |
| Hehe my major is physics.. Anyway yes everytime you look up at the sky you are essentially looking into the past Light from the nearest star takes a long time get to earth. Stars far away could take 1000s of years to reach are planet and im sure the stars the hubble is viewing take 1000000s of year to reach earth. |
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| SuperFarStucker |
| quote: | Originally posted by fr0st
Hehe my major is physics.. Anyway yes everytime you look up at the sky you are essentially looking into the past Light from the nearest star takes a long time get to earth. Stars far away could take 1000s of years to reach are planet and im sure the stars the hubble is viewing take 1000000s of year to reach earth. |
Only millions? I thought it should take at least billions of years.
I am not a physiscist but from my understanding past and present (and likewise "time") exist relative to your position in space. In our present we see their past but since nothing travels faster than light through such mediums (vacuum of space) we cannot be affected by any events until we see them. Present, past and future are not dependant on frame of time but rather your point in space.
Stephen Hawking talks about light cones in layman's depth in his book "a brief history of time." I came to that conclusion from it, so perhaps I just misinterpreted his work. |
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| SuperFarStucker |
| quote: | Originally posted by smokeape
So why did it take the Hubble nearly 3 months of staring? If they were looking for old stuff, like light that what would take more than 3 months to get here, then wouldn't a quick pic do the same?
[[[smoke]]] |
My guess: all the data couldn't get recorded in one pass. You'd have to have one hell of a CCD to dump the equivalant of a 60 MiB jpeg (read: HUGE). The issue arising from a 90 day long time span for a photograph is pretty much null at such scales, as there would only be minimal (i.e. non recordable) differences.
Digressing - Seeing that photograph and noting its place in the cosmos it becomes difficult to hold the belief we exist as the only sentient life in this joint... |
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| davinox |
| thanks for the link |
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| smokeape |
| quote: | Originally posted by SuperFarStucker
My guess: all the data couldn't get recorded in one pass. You'd have to have one hell of a CCD to dump the equivalant of a 60 MiB jpeg (read: HUGE). The issue arising from a 90 day long time span for a photograph is pretty much null at such scales, as there would only be minimal (i.e. non recordable) differences.
Digressing - Seeing that photograph and noting its place in the cosmos it becomes difficult to hold the belief we exist as the only sentient life in this joint... |
So how much more power does the Hubble have over a state of the art digital camera you can buy off the shelf these days, of course minus the big lens? 60 meg seems like chump change when it takes me a bunch of adjusting to reduce a simple image from my scanner into a reasonable size.
[[[smoke]]] |
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| igottaknow |
neat look at the universe. Although i'm feel a tad bit insignificant now. :p
i thought it would be funny to insert you are here arrow pointing to a spec of light, just too lazy to photoshop it. |
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| SuperFarStucker |
| quote: | Originally posted by smokeape
So how much more power does the Hubble have over a state of the art digital camera you can buy off the shelf these days, of course minus the big lens? 60 meg seems like chump change when it takes me a bunch of adjusting to reduce a simple image from my scanner into a reasonable size.
[[[smoke]]] |
I do not believe it capture in jpeg but a format more similar to bitmaps. It would fail to surprise me if it was in the order of GiB when captured. Most off the shelf cameras are limited to about 20xx by 1536 as far as resolution is concerned. The 60.9 MiB image was 6200x6200 and hubble may have captured it at an even higher resolution.
The complexity involved in capturing such a tiny point on the horizon surely contributed to how long it pointed in that spot. Talk about magnification. |
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| dj-sean |
| quote: | | Originally posted by SuperFarStucker Digressing - Seeing that photograph and noting its place in the cosmos it becomes difficult to hold the belief we exist as the only sentient life in this joint... |
Seeing as how our solar system is one of hundreds of billions in our galaxy, and our galaxy is one of tens of billions in the observable universe, I'd wager you'd have to be a humongous ing idiot to assume otherwise. |
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| smokeape |
| quote: | Originally posted by SuperFarStucker
I do not believe it capture in jpeg but a format more similar to bitmaps. It would fail to surprise me if it was in the order of GiB when captured. Most off the shelf cameras are limited to about 20xx by 1536 as far as resolution is concerned. The 60.9 MiB image was 6200x6200 and hubble may have captured it at an even higher resolution.
The complexity involved in capturing such a tiny point on the horizon surely contributed to how long it pointed in that spot. Talk about magnification. |
Don't be shocked if the power were much less. Remember the years of funding the original design with contract building specs on the original design while technology marched on. When the Hubble was finally built, it was built with old specs and has been hovering around up there for years without many significant upgrades. Imagine using a computer designed over 15 years ago with a state of the art 66mz chip (might not have had that 15 years ago). You want an upgrade? Chip alone doesn't do it; you need the motherboard and ad finitum. Most of our modern missiles are obsolete before they leave the launchpad.
[[[smoke]]] |
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| SuperFarStucker |
| quote: | Originally posted by dj-sean
Seeing as how our solar system is one of hundreds of billions in our galaxy, and our galaxy is one of tens of billions in the observable universe, I'd wager you'd have to be a humongous ing idiot to assume otherwise. |
I feel I cannot agree with your statement. It strikes me as plausible that our planet currently harbours the only sentient life in the universe. The possibility that we happened to end up here as the result of some freak accident in the cosmos remains unseen at the moment. While unlikely, you'd be foolish to discount other possibilities until we have PROOF otherwise. Scientific theology if you will... |
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| SuperFarStucker |
| quote: | Originally posted by smokeape
Don't be shocked if the power were much less. Remember the years of funding the original design with contract building specs on the original design while technology marched on. When the Hubble was finally built, it was built with old specs and has been hovering around up there for years without many significant upgrades. Imagine using a computer designed over 15 years ago with a state of the art 66mz chip (might not have had that 15 years ago). You want an upgrade? Chip alone doesn't do it; you need the motherboard and ad finitum. Most of our modern missiles are obsolete before they leave the launchpad.
[[[smoke]]] |
I had not previuosly thought about the chasm between today's technology and what hubble has on board. I thought about it for awhile and decided while possible, it doesn't seem likely that the Hubble repairs (which have been permanently put on ICE btw, R.I.P. Hubble) would have upgraded the satellite as it would introduce all kinds of new potential problems. I would suppose that the dated technology onboard is primarily responsible for Hubble's "long stare" then. |
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| dj-sean |
| quote: | Originally posted by SuperFarStucker
I feel I cannot agree with your statement. It strikes me as plausible that our planet currently harbours the only sentient life in the universe. The possibility that we happened to end up here as the result of some freak accident in the cosmos remains unseen at the moment. While unlikely, you'd be foolish to discount other possibilities until we have PROOF otherwise. Scientific theology if you will... |
I'm not claiming to have any deep insights here. I'm simply saying that statistically speaking, based on what we know RIGHT NOW, my money is on other life existing in the universe.
To add to that, it'd be real depressing IMO if we were the only intelligent life in the universe. Our planet is a miniscule spec of near-nothingness as far as the universe is concerned, and to think that out of the entire vast expanse we're it as far as life is concerned... yikes, shoot me now. |
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