The Holonet Boards   » Leaving Orbit....   » New Hubble Pics


Anakin

posted 05-04-2002 01:24 PM    
Taken with it's new camera, they're pretty cool:
http://sites.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2002/11/pr-photos.html

Anakin

posted 05-04-2002 01:36 PM    
The best pics are the high resolution ones, if you can zoom out on it. It's weird that on the last picture, the people probably don't have a clue thats what their galaxy looks like...

When we look at the stars, we're seeing them from a long time ago. When Hubble looks, does it see them as they are this moment, or does it see them as they were a long time ago too?


Padme of Hidden Lake

posted 05-16-2002 10:29 AM    
I would think as they were a long time ago too cause it can see faster than the speed of light will bring it the images. But that would be my relatively simple phyics explaination...

I will look at hte pics tommorrow - as it sounds interesting but now it is time to go to Fencing club and then SW!!!!!!!! WoooHoo!!


Graysith

posted 05-16-2002 05:32 PM    
Ummm... telescopes see the same images we do, only with greater clarity because they have a bigger "eye" with which to view the stars (it's called the aperture; the bigger the diameter of the telescope's mirror or lens, the better the image because it can "capture" more of the incoming photons).

Photons are photons, and all travel at lightspeed. The farther away the source of the image, the longer it takes the light to reach us, so therefore the older the light is which forms the image we are looking at. For example, the Great Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda (M-31) is approximately 2.3 million lightyears away. We can see this galaxy in the Northern Hemisphere with the naked eye (if we're in a dark sky area) so the light we are actually seeing is 2.3 million years old.

Essentially we're looking back in time... and telescopes don't speed up the process at all. Their function is to grab more photons, and the function of the eyepiece of the telescope is to magnify that image so we can see it better.

And... if telescopes could somehow reach out and "see light faster than it was coming in to them" then they would be seeing "younger," hence newer, light. Think about it...

What gives me goosebumps to consider is the fact that in the one image, all the "stars" in the background are other galaxies, each with probably approximately 6-10 billion stars in it.

Knda makes ya feel eensy beensy, doesn't it?

[ 05-16-2002 06:27 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Graysith ]


Padme of Hidden Lake

posted 05-17-2002 08:03 AM    
Yeah it does make you feel like a grain of sand in comparison to the beach...

And those pics are gorgeous!!!