Hubble Favorites
A National Air and Space Museum astronomer picks some of his favorite images from the storied telescope.
- By Rebecca Maksel
- AirSpaceMag.com, May 22, 2009
NASA and Jeff Hester (Arizona State University)
Trifid Nebula, Hubble View (1999)
“This is a star-forming region, and the star is forming within a huge cloud of gas and dust,” says DeVorkin. “If you look at the right side [of the photograph] you’ll see that at the very center of this is an overexposed image of a star—a very hot star. The star is radiating and heating the gas and dust around it, and pushing it away. And then the two ‘antennae’ are extra dense areas that are actually shadowing the gas behind it, and preventing it from evaporating even though everything else around it is evaporating. And so we guess there must be solar systems, or a solar system, in the center of that tiny little lobe at the top of that ‘antenna’ in the process of formation.
Eventually the heat and light and pressure from the bright star will blow all that gas and dust away, and whatever is left will form that solar system.”
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Comments (3)
AWESOME- keep em coming !!!!!!!
Posted by Peter Ballo on June 19,2009 | 05:25 PM
This is a marvel of technology in optics would be a shame to become obsolete.
Posted by Clemente Ruiz Gordillo on July 2,2009 | 04:46 AM
This truly is mind boggling and wondrous. But I am not quite sure what Dr DeVorkin means when he says that the astronomers are translating what they think they are seeing. Is this like an electron microscope where actual images are seen as they are. Or is this "drawing" a translation say much like a translator will translate a poem? The actual words are not necessarily being translated because poems are especially idiomatic where the vernacular just cannot be written word for word- in some cases it would even be unintelligible. So, just exactly what is the astronomer imaging- spectroscopic, radio wave or some other medium ? DAVID DeVORKIN REPLIES:
Astronomers receive data from Hubble’s cameras in single color bands (spectral bands) that they have chosen from an available menu of some 48 programmable color and polarizing filters in the camera. The bands are chosen mainly to reveal chemical and physical processes active in those bands. If they then choose, they can mix and match, and in effect, “colorize” any of those bands to bring out specific behaviors of the elements in the bodies they are studying that are of scientific value in their work. They can also choose colorized bands that produce aesthetically pleasing or provocative spacescapes. So astronomers do not “see” these objects “as they are” or as if one were observing at some vantage point in space (in which case typically the objects would be very low contrast). Astronomers construct these images to reveal the dynamical processes that are at play in the object.
Posted by Charles McHaley on August 5,2009 | 08:40 PM