Starship Asterisk*

Rick wrote:I meant identical wording. And it's the same Hubble picture, with more processing. Great work on the picture, a bit lazy on the text.

geckzilla wrote:

Rick wrote:

ta152h0 wrote:caramba, I am speechless. The big pooobahs at APOD hit one out of the park. Time for an ice cold one to stop the vibrations

Second one out of the park, then. Word for word identical, just re-processed picture. (well, not "just", but you see what I mean)

The 2002 APOD actually an image which uses data from 1997. That's 5 years prior to this APOD's data. It's the same object but by no means identical. There are striking differences. Sept. 15th's APOD is also twice as detailed in resolution.

Deborah Kenny wrote:Hi,

MIRVIS is a filter combination for the STIS - Mirror plus Visible.
There are two different settings. One gives 3050 - 5550 and
the other 5550 - 10,000 Angstroms.

Hope this helps!

Rick wrote:

ta152h0 wrote:caramba, I am speechless. The big pooobahs at APOD hit one out of the park. Time for an ice cold one to stop the vibrations

Second one out of the park, then. Word for word identical, just re-processed picture. (well, not "just", but you see what I mean)

Chris Peterson wrote:The STIS instrument has a fancy sort of "filter wheel" called the mode selection device. It consists of a large number of gratings optimized for specific modes, as well as a prism and a simple mirror. The particular mode selecting element used for an image is identified in the FITS header as the optical element. MIRVIS means the mirror was used- that is, a direct image was made, not a spectroscopic image using one of the gratings.

DavidLeodis wrote:In the image description in Judy Schmidt's 'Geckzilla' website it mentions STIS/MIRVIS data. I have found that STIS is the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope but, despite lots of searching, I have not been able to find what MIRVIS stands for. It is not even defined in the Hubble Legacy Archive glossary section! I guess the IRVIS part may be InfraRed VISual.

ta152h0 wrote:caramba, I am speechless. The big pooobahs at APOD hit one out of the park. Time for an ice cold one to stop the vibrations

Roland wrote:
What is the period of revolution for the stars in the center of the disk?

DavidLeodis wrote:
In the image description in Judy Schmidt's 'Geckzilla' website it mentions STIS/MIRVIS data. I have found that STIS is the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope but, despite lots of searching, I have not been able to find what MIRVIS stands for. It is not even defined in the Hubble Legacy Archive glossary section! I guess the IRVIS part may be InfraRed VISual.

It's probable that my searching is poor, but I have tried (wow have I tried!) and have now given up! I would be grateful if someone could please let me know what MIRVIS stands for.

• It's a mystery

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2002MNRAS.337..840R wrote:
wide V-band filter ('mirvis').

geckzilla wrote:

neufer wrote:

Boomer12k wrote:
The Symmetry is amazing...not exact of course...but amazing...

Including the diffraction spikes

There are some curved elements near the diffraction spikes I have been wondering if they are some kind of similar anomalies or real structures in the nebula. I was looking through the list of optical anomalies for STIS but couldn't find anything resembling those. I've tried looking in other images of the nebula and I think they might be real but it's hard to discern and may just be wishful thinking.

neufer wrote:

Boomer12k wrote:
The Symmetry is amazing...not exact of course...but amazing...

Including the diffraction spikes

Boomer12k wrote:
The Symmetry is amazing...not exact of course...but amazing...

• Including the diffraction spikes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Nebula_M2-9 wrote:
<<Minkowski 2-9, abbreviated M2-9 (and also known as Minkowski's Butterfly, the Wings of a Butterfly Nebula or just Butterfly Nebula, and Twin Jet Nebula) is a planetary nebula that was discovered by Rudolph Minkowski in 1947. It is located about 2,100 light-years away from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus. This bipolar nebula takes the peculiar form of twin lobes of material that emanate from a central star. Astronomers have dubbed this object as the Twin Jet Nebula because of the polar jets believed to cause the shape of the lobes. Its form also resembles the wings of a butterfly. The nebula was imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in the 1990s.

M2-9 represents the spectacular “last gasp” of a binary star system at the nebula's center. The primary component of this binary is the hot core of a star that reached the end of its main-sequence life cycle, ejected most of its outer layers and became a red giant, and is now contracting into a white dwarf. It is believed to have been a sun-like star early in its life. The second, smaller star of the binary orbits very closely and may even have been engulfed by the other's expanding stellar atmosphere with the resulting interaction creating the nebula. Astronomers theorize that the gravity of one star pulls some of the gas from the surface of the other and flings it into a thin, dense disk extending into space. Such a disk can successfully account for the jet-exhaust-like appearance of M2-9.

The nebula has inflated dramatically due to a fast stellar wind, blowing out into the surrounding disk and inflating the large, wispy hourglass-shaped wings perpendicular to the disk. These wings produce the butterfly appearance when seen in projection. The outer shell is estimated to be about 1,200 years old.>>

geckzilla wrote:Like I said earlier in the xkcd IRC channel, this saves me the trouble of having to run around, putting it in people's faces and commanding them to look at the majesty of space. That's what I wanted to do when I found it in the archive. Couldn't seem to process it fast enough.

nealmcb wrote:I'm puzzled by the name M2-9. It looks like a mislabeled Messier object at first. It doesn't seem that Minkowski discovered a whole catalog worth of objects, such that they would need a two-level naming scheme. The numbers are single digits, and don't seem to label the RA Dec or that sort of thing, though I haven't checked in other coordinate systems. So what's up?