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    The Eye of God

    I just changed my desktop wallpaper from a photo of Jupiter, which replaced the Enterprise leaving Earth orbit, to an infrared photo of the Helix Nebula taken by the Spitzer IR telescope.

    Click image for larger version

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    It fills my entire LCD. The photo of it in the visual spectrum isn't a neat looking. It's only 650 LYs away from Earth and is about fills an area of the sky equal to the size of the Moon.

    This image
    is in the near-infrared, taken using the European Southern Observatory’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), a 4.1 meter telescope in Chile. Equipped with a whopping
    67 megapixel
    camera it can take pictures of large areas of the sky. The Helix nebula fits that bill: it’s close enough to us that it’s nearly the size of the full Moon in the sky.

    This image is pretty nifty. It accentuates cooler gas than what we see in visible light. What’s colored red in the picture is actually infrared light coming from molecular hydrogen, and shows the sharp ring-like edge of the nebula. What you’re seeing here is not so much a ring as it is the walls of a barrel-like structure, and we happen to be seeing it nearly right down the tube (see Related postsbelow for all the info you could want on this amazing object).

    It also accentuates the long, long streamers pointing directly away from the center. Those are comet-like tails coming from denser clumps of material boiling away as the fierce ultraviolet light of the central star floods out, their material flowing radially outward.
    This site:
    http://om-blog.orbitalmaneuvers.com/...-helix-nebula/
    has some very interesting additional photos. One of them shows:
    To get a sense of size, these bulbous, comet-like shapes are on the order of the size of our Solar System. They have been sculpted out of the dust and gas by the high energy solar wind coming off the white dwarf star located at the center of the nebula. The material was blown off from the original star when it ballooned into a red giant several times as it aged and consumed its fuel—hydrogen.

    The Helix Nebula is one of the closest at a distance of about 650 light-years from Earth, and it is about three to six light-years across. It can be found in the constellation of Aquarius. The Helix also goes by its catalog number NGC 7293.

    I sat here and pondered the immensity of an explosion which would reach out dozens of astronomical units and blow the space surrounding it essentially clean of matter.

    ​​
    "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
    – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

    #2
    I have seen many images of this, but this is an especially nice one. What is most interesting is that until your post I had NO idea of the size of this thing, much less its shape. Astounding...

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      #3
      And here's one that applies the perspective of time.

      Comment


        #4
        Those are excellent videos. I've seen them before.

        The Universe is huge beyond imagination. Numbers don't do it justice. And, despite our physics and math, I suspect that even our puny Sun has more surprises in store for us than we realize.

        One thing seems certain now, and that is that warp drive is not possible. Chemical rockets can't even get us to Alpha Centauri. Fusion powered star ships can achieve only 10% the speed of Light, which would make a trip to Alpha Centauri a one-way journey of more than 40 years. Trips to more distant stars would require generational ships. Imagine a ship leaving Earth at the time of Washington, and just now arriving at Benard's Star. And, imagine that they find no planets that support habitation. What would they do? Mine that solar system for new fuel and resources and move to the next closest star? And send another 10 generations through the Soylent Green vats? It seems obvious that the bounds of man's habitations have been set. He is locked into this solar system, and onto this planet. The cost alone of sustained manned exploration beyond the moon will prohibit such activities for the next 100 years or more, if ever. And if it isn't money that stops us it will be our dwindling resources. That realization saddened me.

        Here is an image of the relative sizes of stars.
        "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
        – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by GreyGeek View Post
          One thing seems certain now, and that is that warp drive is not possible... It seems obvious that the bounds of man's habitations have been set. He is locked into this solar system, and onto this planet. The cost alone of sustained manned exploration beyond the moon will prohibit such activities for the next 100 years or more, if ever. And if it isn't money that stops us it will be our dwindling resources. That realization saddened me.
          Given these constraints, then, maybe we should redirect wasteful little-green-men research into something with much greater potential: exploring the 70% of Earth that we still know very little about. By that I mean our oceans. Allow private industry to move into space, and instead let's toss a few billion dollars' research money toward NOAA. Robert Ballard makes a compelling case for this in his 2008 TED talk.



          Our country has two exploration programs. One is NASA, with a mission to explore the great beyond, to explore the heavens, which we all want to go to if we're lucky. And you can see we have Sputnik, and we have Saturn, and we have other manifestations of space exploration. Well, there's also another program, in another agency within our government, in ocean exploration. It's in NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And my question is this: "why are we ignoring the oceans?" Here's the reason, or not the reason, but here's why I ask that question. If you compare NASA's annual budget to explore the heavens, that one-year budget would fund NOAA's budget to explore the oceans for 1,600 years. Why? Why are we looking up? Is it because it's heaven? And hell is down here? Is it a cultural issue? Why are people afraid of the ocean? Or do they just assume the ocean is just a dark, gloomy place that has nothing to offer?

          Comment


            #6
            I agree. Excellent suggestions, Steve!

            EDIT: I remember seeing that video, but I watched it again.

            The middle school girl with the jaw drop.... for teacher that is an awesome moment! Those brought the greatest joy to me during my 18 years teaching.
            Last edited by GreyGeek; Apr 01, 2012, 07:29 PM.
            "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
            – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

            Comment

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