Paid for with your tax dollars
Mar. 6th, 2006 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sepdetSome Hubble Space Telescope Images
Warning, it probably needs broadband. Remember these are not paintings, they're photographs, somewhat color-enhanced to pick up light in the infrared end of the spectrum, but honest-to-gosh what's out there.
There's a crab nebula picture in there that's mindboggling. Also, one of the images isn't much to look at, right at the end of the song, just some inkblot distant lights -- but they are from a photo known as the Deep Field, where Hubble was pointed at a black, apparently empty part of the sky, set to maximum zoom -- I have no idea of the distance, but's practically back to the beginning of the universe, because light's taken so long to get here from there -- and lo and behold, even in that blackness, there are galaxies as far as the eye can see. Those galaxies, however, are strange... I think I remember reading that it was obvious their structure wasn't like those found now... so we're getting a peek of the universe forming in that photo.
Every one of these pictures tells a story like that. And a lot more, to the experts.
Cost: a few fighter planes.
*sighs* Poor old Hubble. And they said it was useless, when it was first launched! I wonder how many years it's gone past its planned mission.
The Mars Rovers are still operational, by the way...every day they're climbing around the planet taking samples and photos, long after that mission should've ended.
Warning, it probably needs broadband. Remember these are not paintings, they're photographs, somewhat color-enhanced to pick up light in the infrared end of the spectrum, but honest-to-gosh what's out there.
There's a crab nebula picture in there that's mindboggling. Also, one of the images isn't much to look at, right at the end of the song, just some inkblot distant lights -- but they are from a photo known as the Deep Field, where Hubble was pointed at a black, apparently empty part of the sky, set to maximum zoom -- I have no idea of the distance, but's practically back to the beginning of the universe, because light's taken so long to get here from there -- and lo and behold, even in that blackness, there are galaxies as far as the eye can see. Those galaxies, however, are strange... I think I remember reading that it was obvious their structure wasn't like those found now... so we're getting a peek of the universe forming in that photo.
Every one of these pictures tells a story like that. And a lot more, to the experts.
Cost: a few fighter planes.
*sighs* Poor old Hubble. And they said it was useless, when it was first launched! I wonder how many years it's gone past its planned mission.
The Mars Rovers are still operational, by the way...every day they're climbing around the planet taking samples and photos, long after that mission should've ended.
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Date: 2006-03-07 06:04 am (UTC)