

Hubble returns. Nasa: 8 new images since servicing mission in May 2009 - yu
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/hubble_gallery/

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coderdude
Stunning pictures!
[http://internal.hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2...](http://internal.hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/25/image/a/)

I found a better page for viewing the images, not quite as painful as the
Wired method (Next... Next...).

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KevinMS
Pictures like these bother me because I don't know which have been manipulated
(brightness, contrast, color, etc), for public consumption or to highlight
certain features for study. Anybody know if there are unaltered images from
Hubble? I'm talking about the true visible light spectrum ones (if there are
any).

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lutorm
There are no images that mimic the color response of the human eye, though you
could approximate such an image by combining many images in filters covering
the visible colors.

But they would still not be "unaltered". Astronomical objects have an
extremely large dynamic range in terms of brightness. If you've ever looked at
a galaxy through a telescope, you'll see what I mean. You just see a blob
that's the bright central bulge. The brightness distribution in a galaxy falls
off _exponentially_ with radius. If you amplify the signal to see the faint
outer parts, the central part would hurt your eyes (or, practically speaking,
saturate).

We made a movie of a simulated galaxy merger for a competition last year:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agqLEbOFT2A> In this rendering, the colors are
approximately realistic, but the brightness is not. For my own education, I
made an alternative rendering with just a fixed linear stretch that should
more realistically (barring monitor gamma) mimic what the eye would see. In
that movie (I've been meaning to upload it), you basically only see the
centers of the two galaxies, nothing else.

So the bottom line is, to see any detail you _must_ "manipulate" these images.
It's reminiscent of High-Dynamic Range photography
[<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging>], where you
compress the range of brightnesses to be able to convey a scene in one image.

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rbanffy
"For my own education, I made an alternative rendering"

Please upload it. A side-by-side comparison does have an educational value on
itself.

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rbanffy
Images like these always bring up that Brother Cavil's (from BSG -
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407362/quotes>) line: "I want to see gamma rays!
I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! (...) And
feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me!"

I don't know about you, but it's deeply moving for me.

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fishercs
the pictures with the hundreds of galaxies shown is the real kicker, you talk
about sizing one's self up instantly.

amazing, i'm glad we have programs like this. I can say being in my 20's i'm
actually pretty sad too have missed the excitement of the apollo program's in
the 60's and 70's. i can only hope i get to witness similar events in my
lifetime.

~~~
eru
I guess we will put live on Mars within our lifetime. Not necessarily human
live. Perhaps microbes or advanced robots.

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asdlfj2sd33
Few things make me feel palpable joy like this.

