Starship Asterisk*

http://astrobob.areavoices.com/?blog=78068 wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF]Artist’s impression shows the location of RS Pup in the Milky Way Galaxy. RS Pup is about 6,500 light years away, with an uncertainty of 90 light-years. It’s 10 times more massive than the sun and 15,000 times brighter. Credit: ESO / Hubble[/color][/b]

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Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Amazing RS Puppis, a star with a groovy echo
Astrobob, December 18, 2013

<<Have you ever seen an echo? Maybe if you’re a bat, which can form a mental picture of its environment using echolocation. Well, then, allow me to introduce you to the star RS Puppis in the constellation Puppis the Ship’s Stern. Unlike the steady sun, RS Pup pulsates like a beating heart, becoming brighter and fainter by a factor of five about every 40 days. Instabilities in the star’s core brought on by switching from hydrogen to helium fuel cause regular expansions and contractions – actual changes in the star’s size – that we see as cyclic changes in its brightness.

Lucky for us bat types, the star is swaddled in nebulosity, a swirly cloud of gas and dust. As RS Pup brightens, a pulse of light travels from near to far across the expanse of the nebula, reflecting off gas and dust to create a light echo. Watching the video might make you think you’re seeing an expanding gas cloud. That’s an illusion. Instead, light moves across the nebula like someone pointing a flashlight in a cave, the beam touching nearby walls first and then reaching farther back into the deeper recesses. Every 5-6 weeks another pulse echoes across the murky gas clouds.

We hear an echo when sound bounces off objects in the environment and reflects back to our ears; echoes around RS Puppis happen the same way except with light instead of sound.

Interestingly, as the reflected light bounces off the nebula’s nooks and crannies, it takes a variety of different paths through the gas and arrives at Earth after light that travels straight from star to telescope. This helps reinforce the ‘expanding gas cloud’ illusion.>>

neufer wrote:

ta152h0 wrote:
and sometimes underwhelming

Have some draft beer, ta152h0.

ta152h0 wrote:
and sometimes underwhelming

neufer wrote:No One asked YOUR opinion

ta152h0 wrote:
scientist humor is sometimes overwhelming

neufer wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Molasses_Disaster wrote:
<< ... Anthony di Stasio, walking homeward with his sisters from the Michelangelo School, was picked up by the wave and carried, tumbling on its crest, almost as though he were surfing. Then he grounded and the molasses rolled him like a pebble as the wave diminished. He heard his mother call his name and couldn't answer, his throat was so clogged with the smothering goo. He passed out, then opened his eyes to find three of his four sisters staring at him.>>

Beyond wrote:
So... white cane sugar is lesslasses

• No One asked YOUR opinion

`Once upon a time there were three little sisters,' the Dormouse began in a great hurry; `and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well--'

`What did they live on?' said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.

`They lived on treacle,' said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.

`They couldn't have done that, you know,' Alice gently remarked; `they'd have been ill.'

`So they were,' said the Dormouse; `VERY ill.'

Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: `But why did they live at the bottom of a well?'

`Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

`I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, `so I can't take more.'

`You mean you can't take LESS,' said the Hatter: `it's very easy to take MORE than nothing.'

`Nobody asked YOUR opinion,' said Alice.

ta152h0 wrote:
scientist humor is sometimes overwhelming

neufer wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Molasses_Disaster wrote:
<< ... Anthony di Stasio, walking homeward with his sisters from the Michelangelo School, was picked up by the wave and carried, tumbling on its crest, almost as though he were surfing. Then he grounded and the molasses rolled him like a pebble as the wave diminished. He heard his mother call his name and couldn't answer, his throat was so clogged with the smothering goo. He passed out, then opened his eyes to find three of his four sisters staring at him.>>

neufer wrote:In Art, "schlock" is sometimes used as a synonym for kitsch.>>

geckzilla wrote:
I had read that before.

Thinking about it again, though, shocks might be comparable to light echoes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlock wrote:
<<Schlock is an English word of Yiddish origin meaning "something cheap, shoddy, or inferior (perhaps from German Schlag, Yiddish shlak, meaning 'a stroke'; also possibly from German "Schlag"/"Schlagsahne", whipped cream)" In the field of science, "schlock" refers to shoddy methods or unreliable results.

In Art, "schlock" is sometimes used as a synonym for kitsch.>>

ta152h0 wrote:
Maybe some B&W taken by , let's say, Mr Hubble himself ?

http://www.astro.washington.edu/users/balick/WFPC2/hb5.caption.html wrote:
Nickname: Hubble's Double Bubble
observed by HST: Sep 9 1997
distance 0.7 kpc (2200 l.y.)
constellation: Sagittarius

<<Hubble 5 is a strikingly lovely "butterfly" or bipolar (two-lobed) nebula which has received relatively little attention. Internal motions in the nebula have been measured spectroscopically to be in excess of 200 miles per second. The heat generated by the winds causes the each of the lobes to expand, much like a pair of balloons with internal heaters. The expanding lobes encounter older material ejected previously. Supersonic shocks form where the ambient gas is compressed and heated ahead of the rapidly expanding lobes. Atoms caught in the shocks radiate the visible light seen in this image.>>

geckzilla wrote:
Yes, but there are sometimes strange cases, are there not? I definitely wouldn't say that any of the other planetary nebulas I've looked at are similar to this one. I have to look at more bipolar ones, though.

geckzilla wrote:
Hmm, it might actually be slightly easier to see them in my version.
I circled some of the others that aren't so close to the star and which take on a circular shape.
http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/Hubble5_ ... choes1.jpg
http://www.geckzilla.com/astro/Hubble5_ ... choes2.jpg

geckzilla wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote: Maybe, but their high symmetry makes me think these are diffraction artifacts.

Hmm, it might actually be slightly easier to see them in my version.

Chris Peterson wrote: Maybe, but their high symmetry makes me think these are diffraction artifacts.

geckzilla wrote:I came back to this thread to make sure my understanding was correct because as I was messing around processing the Hubble 5 nebula I saw some repeating structures that seemed like they could be light echoes. Tried searching for any mention of it with no luck.