Hubble's new eyes.

[GodlessAstronomer]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: Locut0s

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
i remember they were scared to do the refurb because the shuttle goes to its max orbit to fix the hubble..and can't go back to the space station if sh*t happens.
but why can't they add an extra fuel tank/air tanks or whatever in the cargo bay...its probably mostly empty on such missions.

For one it's not empty on such missions. It holds the replacement instruments for the Hubble. Two the shuttle was not designed to be refueled in space, nor was is designed to have extra thrusters attached. Three $$$.

Surely they could just reverse the polarity to compensate for that, right?

As long as they don't cross the streams.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: Locut0s

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
i remember they were scared to do the refurb because the shuttle goes to its max orbit to fix the hubble..and can't go back to the space station if sh*t happens.
but why can't they add an extra fuel tank/air tanks or whatever in the cargo bay...its probably mostly empty on such missions.

For one it's not empty on such missions. It holds the replacement instruments for the Hubble. Two the shuttle was not designed to be refueled in space, nor was is designed to have extra thrusters attached. Three $$$.

hey but its nasa, they fixed a co2 scrubber with ductape! i'm sure they could figure out a way to pump fuel from one container into another.

as for hubble components..just a few components, the bay could hold the entire hubble in the first place meaning it would have been mostly empty.

 

[Locut0s]

This individual pic from the "Astronomy pic of the day archive" gives you a better idea of how sharp these images are:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/ap.../butterfly_hst_big.jpg

Compare it to this previous Hubble image of the same nebula!!

http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod...heic0407a_hst_full.jpg

 

[Locut0s]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: Locut0s

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
i remember they were scared to do the refurb because the shuttle goes to its max orbit to fix the hubble..and can't go back to the space station if sh*t happens.
but why can't they add an extra fuel tank/air tanks or whatever in the cargo bay...its probably mostly empty on such missions.

For one it's not empty on such missions. It holds the replacement instruments for the Hubble. Two the shuttle was not designed to be refueled in space, nor was is designed to have extra thrusters attached. Three $$$.

hey but its nasa, they fixed a co2 scrubber with ductape! i'm sure they could figure out a way to pump fuel from one container into another.

as for hubble components..just a few components, the bay could hold the entire hubble in the first place meaning it would have been mostly empty.

Yeah I'm sure they could have come up with something. Ultinately it comes down to the last reason $$$.

I always thought that the original decision to cut this servicing mission was borderline cowardly on the part of NASA. Every time the astronauts go up they KNOW that they are risking their lives. They know 100% that they might die. Yet they literally jump at the opportunity to do this. Of all the Space Shuttle missions this service mission was arguable the most scientifically productive in years!! The average shuttle mission to the ISS hardly produces anything of scientific value. Yet when something like this comes up they saw "Oh no sorry it's too dangerous". That was a slap in the face not only to the scientist but to the astronauts as well.

 

[Miramonti]

I wonder which is making the biggest difference, a Hubble upgrade, or a Photoshop upgrade.

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: Locut0s
This individual pic from the "Astronomy pic of the day archive" gives you a better idea of how sharp these images are:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/ap.../butterfly_hst_big.jpg

Compare it to this previous Hubble image of the same nebula!!

http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod...heic0407a_hst_full.jpg

woah. where is the butterfly nebula (specifically, how far away), and of what EMS frequency range is it comprised the most? Seems many Hubble images were very detailed and beautiful, that butterfly nebula kind of seems low quality compared to past efforts (prior to upgrade).

Originally posted by: jjsole
I wonder which is making the biggest difference, a Hubble upgrade, or a Photoshop upgrade.

an upgrade in post-processing effects requires a better image to work on.

The Hubble upgrade provides more data, and they are able to digitally manipulate the files to produce a better image.

 

[dbk]

trippy

 

[Fritzo]

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer

Originally posted by: Fritzo
See that first image that looks like a bow tie? That's exactly what's going to happen to our sun in about 4 billion years.

Our Sun isn't quite big enough to go supernova. Instead it will grow into a red giant, expend what fuel is left and when the force of the fusion reaction can no longer hold back the gravitational force it will collapse into a white dwarf and spend the next few billions years cooling off quietly.

It's not a supernova pic, it's a star ejecting it's mass. More info:

"One image shows Planetary Nebula NGC 6302, more commonly known as the Butterfly Nebula. It's a dying star ejecting two "wings" of gas. For the last two millenniums the gas has been spreading outward, and the "butterfly" is now trillions of miles in diameter.

"It portends what our solar system is going to look like in about 4 billion years," NASA's head of science, Ed Weiler, said in an interview. "We're seeing the sun's death in 4 billion years."


http://www.latimes.com/news/na...9sep10,0,3425247.story

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Originally posted by: Fritzo

Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer

Originally posted by: Fritzo
See that first image that looks like a bow tie? That's exactly what's going to happen to our sun in about 4 billion years.

Our Sun isn't quite big enough to go supernova. Instead it will grow into a red giant, expend what fuel is left and when the force of the fusion reaction can no longer hold back the gravitational force it will collapse into a white dwarf and spend the next few billions years cooling off quietly.

It's not a supernova pic, it's a star ejecting it's mass. More info:

"One image shows Planetary Nebula NGC 6302, more commonly known as the Butterfly Nebula. It's a dying star ejecting two "wings" of gas. For the last two millenniums the gas has been spreading outward, and the "butterfly" is now trillions of miles in diameter.

"It portends what our solar system is going to look like in about 4 billion years," NASA's head of science, Ed Weiler, said in an interview. "We're seeing the sun's death in 4 billion years."


http://www.latimes.com/news/na...9sep10,0,3425247.story

Ahh right you are, it's a planetary nebula, my bad. Our own Sun likely won't be quite as impressive as that, the circumstances behind the cool shape are pretty rare (and the original star is much more massive than the Sun).

 

[cliftonite]

I know the colors are added to represent various gasses but if one was in a space ship close enough to look at that nebula, is that how it would look?

 

[Kalmah]

Why are Nasa websites always a pain to navigate?

 

[Mojoed]

Bottom right picture. Anyone see the Yoda-like face? One eye, two nostrils, mouth, chin, hand, finger. Anyone else see this? Maybe I'm crazy.

 

[Adica]

Originally posted by: Mojoed
Bottom right picture. Anyone see the Yoda-like face? One eye, two nostrils, mouth, chin, hand, finger. Anyone else see this? Maybe I'm crazy.

Wow Mojoed, Now that's all I can see......Hmmmmmm Space Monster!

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: Locut0s

Originally posted by: destrekor
oooo

look at the columnar nebula. Is it flicking us off? :laugh:

Looking forward to seeing the results of Hubble's sweeps in search of filamentary structure in the early Universe. Seeing that structure in the old Universe would be epic, and be so simply fitting for what we think we understand/know about the Universe's origins and the physical properties that astrophysicists theorize predict - it would be a huge astronomical breakthrough to have imagery as proof of their theories.

Along that vein I think the most exiting stuff may come from NASAs Planck Surveyor probe. This will map the Cosmic Microwave Background down to an extremely fine resolution. Some of the most exciting breakthroughs of the past few decades in astronomy have come from studies of the CMB, and the probes that preceded Plank like WMAP.

I'm a little perplexed by some of the decisions made on Planck. First, it relies on LHe evaporation to cool the sensors, and second it is a direct measurement device instead of a differential measurement device.

First, LHe evaporates and will run out. While Planck has two sets of instruments and only one relies on the LHe, it kind of sucks that the sensitive instrument has a built-in death.

Second, it is notoriously difficult to measure a value of something by just sensing it. It is so much easier to measure a difference between two regions of the sky (like WMAP does) than it is to just measure the temperature of one region. What makes it even more perplexing is that the CMB is a gaussian random field - this means that all the useful information is contained in the variance of the distribution, not the individual values. That is, it is the differences in temperature across the sky which matter, not the individual temperatures themselves (and the individual temperatures change constantly as the universe expands anyways). Seeing as how it is the differences which you are interested in, and that they are easier to measure, I don't quite understand why Planck measures single spots directly and then does all the work of computing variance after.

*shrug*

 

[Krynj]

Originally posted by: Mojoed
Bottom right picture. Anyone see the Yoda-like face? One eye, two nostrils, mouth, chin, hand, finger. Anyone else see this? Maybe I'm crazy.

I didn't think of Yoda, no, but as soon as I saw it, I thought it looked like some sort of disfigured.