Starship Asterisk*

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080424.html

Taking the stars shows a lot of dust. Interesting; you can pot the stars in with the wave of your mouse. When I put the stars back in; it looks as though the dust is behind the stars. Rather aren't the stars mixed within all that dust? I had no trouble recognizing the North American Nebula but the Pelican I haven't located yet!
Orin

I believe that the Pelican Nebula is directly to the right of the North American Nebula with the brightest knob of luminous gas/dust representing the neck and top of the Pelican Head

Does that tiny luminous bipolar explosion in the bottom right corner have a name?

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080424.html

"We do not follow maps to buried treasure,
. and 'X' never, ever marks the spot."

BMAONE23 wrote:Does that tiny luminous bipolar explosion in the bottom right corner have a name?

I think that one would be the Crescent Nebula.

BMAONE23 wrote:I believe that the Pelican Nebula is directly to the right of the North American Nebula with the brightest knob of luminous gas/dust representing the neck and top of the Pelican Head

Does that tiny luminous bipolar explosion in the bottom right corner have a name?

Thanks BMAONE23; I see it now. Fits in like a puzzle piece.

orin stepanek wrote:Taking the stars shows a lot of dust. Interesting; you can pot the stars in with the wave of your mouse. When I put the stars back in; it looks as though the dust is behind the stars. Rather aren't the stars mixed within all that dust?

I think the majority of the stars removed were foreground stars. There are still quite a few stars left amongst the dust and debris (not just Deneb). Moving your cursor will brighten some of them, but they remain after the cursor is removed. I believe that these are stars within the clouds of hydrogen and dust.

Case wrote:

BMAONE23 wrote:Does that tiny luminous bipolar explosion in the bottom right corner have a name?

I think that one would be the Crescent Nebula.

That's the one...nice little feature

"April 24 2008 Cygnus without stars" apod made me realize that a bright nebulae, once considered as a single object, (as seen with small telescopes) like the North America Nebula is just a lighted part of a huge "cloud" of glowing hydrogen atoms.

I heard they are building a new telescope, to replace HUBBLE. Hope they test the optics first for it will be a stunning collection of images, I am sure.

orin stepanek wrote:http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080424.html

Taking the stars shows a lot of dust. Interesting; you can pot the stars in with the wave of your mouse. :) When I put the stars back in; it looks as though the dust is behind the stars. Rather aren't the stars mixed within all that dust? :? :(
Orin

Orin,
I think this is an illusion. The rather dim star images that get throught he filter are outshone by the araes of high hydrogen emission, but obvious where there is darkness behind them. The areas of intense dustiness (?), between the NA nebula and its companio to the right, and to the left of the Crescent seem to show LESS stars overlying than the average, but I don't think that's significant.
That latter area of dustiness (?) looks to me like the Mediterranean Sea!

John

Makes one look in awe at how large the galaxy really is. All those stars and dust; yet the nearest star is a whooping 4 ly. away.

Orin

How thick is the galactic dust anyway? Is it like a fine mist that you can only see from vast distances? If you were in it would you notice it around you; or only as distance concentrated the amount that you see?
Orin

I think that "if you were in it" you wouldn't "notice it" as I read about this subject concerning the Orion nebulea.

I am guessing we wouldn't notice it but we might be in a molecular cloud ourselves . I often wondered where the sun gets all its hydrogen to maintain fusion for so many years.......... pass the beer

ta152h0 wrote:I heard they are building a new telescope, to replace HUBBLE. Hope they test the optics first for it will be a stunning collection of images, I am sure.

They are working on the Kepler; to be launched next year, but I don't think it is to replace Hubble. Rather I believe it is a planet hunter.

http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/
Orin

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080424.html

if they build a telescope that can find microbial life on the back of a waterbuffalo on a planet farther than 5 light years away.......we are in for some images.

ta152h0 wrote:I am guessing we wouldn't notice it but we might be in a molecular cloud ourselves . I often wondered where the sun gets all its hydrogen to maintain fusion for so many years.......... pass the beer

All the hydrogen the Sun burns is contained in a relatively small volume near the middle.
The hydrogen in the solar core is all it will ever have to "burn". All it will ever
have to convert into helium to warm our worlds. It is not an endless resource.
It will run out, someday.
The idea that Sol gets extra hydrogen from outer space, that it can pick up
fuel from the galactic clouds is erroneous. Sol projects a sort of force-field,
a bubble of relatively hot, fast-moving wind that pushes away the general
interstellar medium. This is the heliosphere. It is light-days across, and only a
couple of our robots have flown near to the edge of it, the heliopause. These
are the Voyagers and Pioneers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Heli ... rawing.gif
...and..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliosphere
Sol will, in about three or four gigayears, have used up enough of the
hydrogen in its core to cause the core to change state. It will start to use
helium to make things like carbon and oxygen. This will, for a time, produce
more heat than Sol does now. Sol will get hotter. It will expand. This will,
paradoxically, cause the outer surface to cool, to glow more red than yellow.
Sol will become a very hot Red Giant.
Sometime about then it would be very wise for Man to vacate the area.
Earth is not eternal.
When Sol heats up, it will pateurise the planet. Luckily, this will not happen
for another three thousand million years, at least. Most estimates give us five
or more gigayears before Red Giant Sol.
This does not mean we can sit here squabbling about who owns what land,
and which rules apply where until then. We are using up the treasure we need
to get us offworld at a great rate. We really should think of spreading out
right now. Of making this a Human Galaxy, a Human Cosmos.
[See "Life Cycle" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun ]
Our children can always come home to watch Sol grow red.
But only if they live.
SDM.

is there any verifiable data on what happens at the poles ?

ta152h0 wrote:is there any verifiable data on what happens at the poles ?

If you mean the poles of Sol, we have Ulysses. (Latin for Odysseus, and I
can never remember where all the s's go.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_%28spacecraft%29

Yes, I point to Wikipedia a lot. It's a good starting point, it has good onward
links to real sites, like NASA/JPL mission sites and it's usuallly fairly reliable.
Just don't trust it to be right *all* the time.


SDM

ta152h0 wrote:I heard they are building a new telescope, to replace HUBBLE. Hope they test the optics first for it will be a stunning collection of images, I am sure.

The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) is to be launched next month.

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Servicing Mission 4 (SM4), is to be launched in August, 2008, and should extend HST's service past 2012.

The James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's next-generation successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, is to be launched in 2013.

To date, there is no scheduled replacement for Hubble's mission in uv and visible light.

orin stepanek wrote:

ta152h0 wrote:I heard they are building a new telescope, to replace HUBBLE. Hope they test the optics first for it will be a stunning collection of images, I am sure.

They are working on the Kepler; to be launched next year, but I don't think it is to replace Hubble. Rather I believe it is a planet hunter.

http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/
Orin

Kepler really isn't comparable to the Hubble. The Hubble was designed for high resolution and long exposures. Keplar will be more like a wide angle video camera. It will stare at a patch of sky about 10 degrees in diameter (similar to a decent sized telephoto camera lens) and watch about 100,000 stars continuously for very small changes in brightness that indicated a planet has passed in front of the star. About 1 in every 200 earth-like planets should be aligned properly to eclipse their stars, so Kepler could potentially discover earthlike planets around 500 stars, and hot Jupiters around a great many more.

As bystander noted, JWST isn't really a true Hubble replacement. It will have capabilities that Hubble doesn't, but it also will be lacking a few things Hubble has.

However, the things that Hubble is best at, really long exposures of extremely distant space, are well suited to the infrared range of JWST. Most visible light observations can be conducted from the ground using new-fangled adaptive optics. UV will be the main gap in our astronomical capabilities once Hubble is de-orbited.