Category Archives: Hubble Telescope

Hubble Space Telescope image of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1385, located about 30 million light-years away. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Chandar, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST team

The barred spiral galaxy NGC 1385 appears in two strikingly different Hubble telescope images, attributed to the use of various specialized filters.

This luminous tangle of stars and dust is the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1385, which is located approximately 30 million light-years from Earth. The same galaxy was the subject of another Hubble Picture of the Week (see image below), but the two images are notably different. This more recent image has far more pinkish-red and umber shades, whereas the former image was dominated by cool blues. This chromatic variation is not just a creative choice, but also a technical one, made in order to represent the different number and type of filters used to collect the data that were used to make the respective images.

Hubble Space Telescope image of spiral galaxy NGC 1385, located 68 million light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Fornax. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team

It is understandable to be a bit confused as to how the same galaxy, imaged twice by the same telescope, could be represented so differently in two different images.

The reason is that like all powerful telescopes used by professional astronomers for scientific research Hubble is equipped with a range of filters. These highly specialized components have little similarity to filters used on social media: those software-powered filters are added after the image has been taken, and cause information to be lost from the image as certain colors are exaggerated or reduced for aesthetic effect.

In contrast, telescope filters are pieces of physical hardware that only allow very specific wavelengths of light to enter the telescope as the data are being collected. This does cause light to be lost, but means that astronomers can probe extremely specific parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. This is very useful for a number of reasons; for example, physical processes within certain elements emit light at very specific wavelengths, and filters can be optimized to these wavelengths.

Take a look at this weeks image and the earlier image of NGC 1385. What are the differences? Can you see the extra detail (due to extra filters being used) in this weeks image?

Read the original post:
Cosmic Chameleon: Galaxy's Stunning Transformation by Hubble Filters - SciTechDaily

I sold many of the photos off the walls of my home and I have spent time pondering whether to replace them or go with new photos to replace them. So far, I have decided to replace them, but have done some minor tweaking of the images before placing the orders these are two of the ones that will be going back on my walls.

The upper photo is a shot that I took years ago while flying through a monsoon storm over Sycamore Canyon on the way back to Sedona it was an incredible day with some intense storm cells and openings that let sunshine pour through and light up the rocks the once in a lifetime shot.

Below is a composite that I did years ago too, but it remains one of my favorites the primary photograph is an aerial shot taken east of the SF Peaks and Sunset Crater poked up through a low cloud layer that extended all the way to the Grand Canyon add to that portions of a Hubble telescope shot blended with it to bring the mysteries of the universe to the fore.

The new Webb telescope has made recent discoveries that call into question the widely accepted theory of an ever-expanding universe wherein galaxies and stars within galaxies are all retreating from each other so that in the distant future night skies would be black and devoid of light. Now, perhaps there is a newer and brighter future to look forward to

A new day in another new week it sure is nice to be here. Have a beautiful day and choose joy, smiles and life.

With joy!

Ted

Let us forgive much, forget more; Let me close my eyes and fall half asleep, That the pictures may grow softer and stiller, And the life, O thou God! again grow gentle.

excerpt from I Ponder Oer Love by Max Ehrmann

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The easiest way to reach Mr. Grussing is by email:ted@tedgrussing.com

In addition tosales of photographsalready taken Ted does special shoots for patrons on request and also does air-to-air photography for those who want photographs of their airplanes in flight. All special photographic sessions are billed on an hourly basis.

Ted also does one-on-one workshops for those interested in learning the techniques he uses. By special arrangement Ted will do one-on-one aerial photography workshops which will include actual photo sessions in the air.

More about Ted Grussing

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Greetings, stargazers.

In 1995 the Hubble science team released the image of the Pillars of Creation. This photograph fundamentally changed the way most of us think of astrophotography. Yes, the high resolution and image details were quite impressive, but it was the color palette that made this image unique. I have written individual columns about nebulae, astrophotography, astronomical filters, and a bit of spectroscopy, but these topics all come together to create these assigned color photographs.

The Pillars of Creation are part of the Eagle Nebula, which was discovered in the eighteenth century and is the 16th object on Charles Messiers list of fuzzy things that are not comets. It was first photographed in the late nineteenth century and had been a regular late twentieth century target for astronomers using film cameras. While the first images were black and white, color film can produce some really nice images that would match (at least somewhat) what we might be able to see with our naked eyes if they were sensitive enough.

Because the Hubble telescope was primarily a science mission, there was great interest in studying the composition of the universe by looking at specific wavelengths of light. Each element has its own unique spectral signature, or fingerprint, so looking for a certain wavelength of light associated with a specific element will reveal the distribution of that element. For example, excited hydrogen atoms emit a prominent red line at 656 nanometers, and taking a photograph through a filter that passes 656 nanometer light will show the distribution of hydrogen atoms.

Narrowband filters are made by building up multiple layers of dielectric coatings on a glass surface. These coatings are the same as the anti-reflective coatings you can get on your eyeglasses, but by using specific thicknesses and layers, selected wavelengths of light can be allowed to pass through, while others are reflected.

Instead of simply looking at one element at a time, it is possible to associate an element to one of the red, green, or blue portions of a 3-color photograph. In what is now called the Hubble Palette, a line of sulfur was assigned to be red, a line of hydrogen was assigned to be green, and a line of oxygen was assigned to be blue.

Narrowband filters are now readily available, although they are not cheap. As the quality of digital cameras has improved over the last couple of decades, so has the quality of Earth-based narrowband images. It is easy to recognize narrow band images because of the vivid colors, instead of the overall magenta tones from hydrogen gas seen in natural light.

As the use of the Fort Lewis observatories continue expanding, I hope that more of these narrowband images will be produced locally.

Hubble image updates

https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2015/news-2015-01.html

Astronomy picture of the day

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/

An Astronomers forecast for Durango

http://www.cleardarksky.com/c/DrngoCOkey.html?1

Old Fort Lewis Observatory

http://www.fortlewis.edu/observatory

hakes_c@fortlewis.edu

This month

Charles Hakes teaches in the physics and engineering department at Fort Lewis College and is the director of the Fort Lewis Observatory.

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The science of exploration through photography The Durango ... - The Durango Herald