APOD Birthday Collage Submissions

[Ann]

In the upper part of the picture, just to the left of center, there is another pic of this nebula in a different false color, showing SN1987A.

SN1987A! Of course! I knew I recognized it, but I couldn't remember what it was. And as I scrutinized the vicinity around SN1987A, I suddenly spotted Comet Hyakutake, or at least I think it might be that great comet that came just before Hale-Bopp. Hale-Bopp is there prominently on the left of your version of van Gogh's painting, of course.

But below Comet Hyakutake there is something I absolutely don't recognize, something that looks like a white egg with an oblong lemon green "yolk".

And if you haven't figured it out before, Ronnie, I love your picture!

Ann

[rwarner]

In the upper part of the picture, just to the left of center, there is another pic of this nebula in a different false color, showing SN1987A.

SN1987A! Of course! I knew I recognized it, but I couldn't remember what it was. And as I scrutinized the vicinity around SN1987A, I suddenly spotted Comet Hyakutake, or at least I think it might be that great comet that came just before Hale-Bopp. Hale-Bopp is there prominently on the left of your version of van Gogh's painting, of course.

But below Comet Hyakutake there is something I absolutely don't recognize, something that looks like a white egg with an oblong lemon green "yolk".

And if you haven't figured it out before, Ronnie, I love your picture!

Ann

You're right about Hyakutake. The oblong thing is the core of NGC4261, with a suspected black hole in its center. I changed the color in the Hubble image to more closely match the color Van Gogh chose.

[rstevenson]

Here's a Bob 'n' Jerry image, which seems to be a tradition for these anniversaries. This mosaic is made from a file of 5,504 APOD images, in thumbnail size, kindly provided by Bob hisself, so I had to do this.

Unfortunately I also had to downsample the file so much that detail is lost. Mosaics are great when you can zoom in on the detail in the tiny individual pictures. I'll try to find a place to host the big image and link to it.

Rob

Bob-n-Jerry-mos1-sm.jpg (233.64 KiB) Viewed 5020 times

[rstevenson]

I have a hosting service now --thanks to the revolving head.

So if all works as advertised, this should be a thumbnail linked to a much larger version...



And here is a screen grab of the fine detail in one of the faces -- not sure if it's Bob or Jerry.

grab-BnJ.jpg (91.17 KiB) Viewed 5018 times

Rob

[rstevenson]

By popular request, the Blue Marble image redone using the file of APOD thumbnails. Lots more detail, in part because I modified the image a bit before running it through the mosaicifier. I increased its contrast and saturation some, reduced the brightness a bit and then, after reducing the size to avoid running out of memory later, I sharpened it overall. All of this made all edges in the image clearer, which givces the mosaic software more to work with.

Click the thumbnail for a large image.

Rob

[rstevenson]

And here's the Hubble Space Telescope orbiting Earth. Besides the thumbnail, I've added a screen capture of a portion of the image to show the detail possible. You can see Albert Einstein helping out as best he can.



Rob

Hubble-Albert.jpg (80.98 KiB) Viewed 5014 times

To bed now, but I might do Jupiter tomorrow, if he doesn't object.

[bystander]

Click the thumbnail for a large image.

I like it!

[Ann]

Wow, that's three great submissions, Rob! I'm impressed. And yes - I particularly like Einstein in (or on) Hubble!

Just one question - couldn't you find a way to fit my favorite cluster, the Pleiades, into all that blue stuff of the Earth and the surroundings of the space telescope?

Ann

[rstevenson]

Just one question - couldn't you find a way to fit my favorite cluster, the Pleiades, into all that blue stuff of the Earth and the surroundings of the space telescope?

Alas, I don't have control over which images the mosaic software uses, except in the aggregate. There are 5,504 thumbnails in the folder I told it to use -- all, as I understand it, of the APOD images up to a few days ago. So there's no doubt that the Pleiades is in there available for use.

The software analyses these tile images before starting to create a mosaic. It also analyses the source image (the one I'm making a mosaic of) and putting that all together, it then decides which tile images will best fit the needs of the source image given the grid size I specify. Some tiles are chosen for their overall colour, and some for their pattern (see the 'eyelid' in the closeup of the Bob 'n' Jerry image, for example.) Tiles may be used more than once in an image, under certain constraints to prevent unwanted obvious patterns. You can see an example of that along the horizon in the Hubble image. I believe the software also selects within a tile image to get what it needs. So if the tile image is rectangular and I've specified square tiles, it will select a square within the rectangle which gives it the most useful part of the tile image.

A search of APOD for "Pleiades" gives 75 hits, so I'd be surprised if at least one of them was not included in this mosaic. But where it might be I can't tell. Maybe we should have a "Where's the Pleiades?" contest.

I should give credit where due. I'm using Mazaika in my iMac Intel Core 2 Duo, running Mac OS X v10.6.3. The software works well within my 3 GB of RAM, without my having to Quit other programs to make room for it. Currently it's in demo mode; I'll be buying it to get its full capabilities.

Coming up: Jupiter!

Rob

[rstevenson]

The behemoth himself, king (so he thinks) of the planets, Jupiter. Made, as the above three were, using thumbnails of all (so I think) APOD images from the past.



And a closeup of the Great Red[ish] Spot.

Rob

[owlice]

Coooooooooool!!!!!!!

[Ann]

Hah, I like it - Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a part of Jupiter's Great Red Spot! (And there is a very face-on center of a spiral galaxy in there, too. What galaxy is it, I wonder? Could it be, uh, M74? Any suggestions? No, wait - I think it is NGC 1232!)

Ann

[rstevenson]

I like that there are pictures of Mars used to show the GRS on Jupiter.

Rob

[v13]

Hello,

I just show your images and I was impressed! Thanks for sharing them!

I'd really like to have some of them in great detail to be able to print them. I see that you have problems hosting them, so if you could create some high-resolutions versions I'm offering to host them in a universitiy in Greece.

For example. I'd love to have a version of starry night in 600 (or 1200) DPIs for A4, just to be ably to print it. I suppose that any high resolution image would be great. The height of a 600 DPI image (assuming landscape orientation) for A4 should be about 4980 pixels. That's 3.32 times the current resolution of starry night.

Of course, in case you send me the images you should also have a copyright notice and a license (I'd go for a free (as in speech) license).

[rstevenson]

Way back near the beginning of this thread I said... "The software I used initially [MacOSaiX] wouldn't work with Google images. Bugged, I guess." I'd like to note that the author kindly sent me a revised plug-in just recently which will make it use Google image search properly. And he's working on an update to the whole thing which will include that fix.

Rob

[owlice]

Yay, Rob! Thanks for the update!!