
Chromoscope: The milky way at different wavelengths - shriphani
http://www.chromoscope.net/
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TeMPOraL
What are those bars of darkness on xray view[0]? I suspect it's an artifact of
stitching photos together rather than a real phenomenon, but I'm curious about
the real answer.

[0] - [http://imgur.com/a/63tJD](http://imgur.com/a/63tJD)

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solaris999
The "What am I looking at?" section
([http://www.chromoscope.net/1.4.1/what.html](http://www.chromoscope.net/1.4.1/what.html))
says that they are:

"Don't worry, they aren't holes in the Universe being ripped open by creatures
from another dimension! They are actually just gaps in the survey."

~~~
pimlottc
Good to know, though they could be better marked so as to less obviously
mistaken for dark areas.

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tyree732
My favorite of the wavelengths presented is radio, as right in the middle you
see a bright radio source that I'm guessing is Sagittarius A _, (probably) the
location of the Milky Way 's supermassive black hole.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*)

~~~
teraflop
To the upper right of that, another notable radio source is Centaurus A, the
spiral-looking blob at roughly -50°, 20°.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaurus_A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaurus_A)

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darkerside
I wonder which of these images is the "realest".

The definition of "real" that first jumps to mind is how closely the image
reflects the mass of the bodies in the galaxy, but I also wonder if there are
other thought-provoking definitions?

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irixusr
I'm not astrophysicist, but I would think they're all as real they just give
different information about the underlying structure and events of the
universe.

Perhaps a the question should be, "which wavelength is more useful?"?

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metalliqaz
I think he actually means, "which one shows the most actual stuff." In that
case, I'd say one of the infrared spectrums would be it.

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biswaroop
A lot of the bright spots in the gamma ray image are supernova remnants
(pulsars and blazars). You can sometimes see the gas from the explosion
emitting in H-alpha around the pulsars (like near vela). Pretty cool.

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Tloewald
My takeaway is that the galaxy is a much flatter disk than we think based on
classic pictures of the milky way. The clouds that make it seem fat are just
nearby rubbish, and the other wavelengths reveal there's nothing really there.

Can someone explain the dark streaks in the x-ray spectrum? (Edit: question is
answered below -- they are gaps in observation, not actual dark streaks.)

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ohitsdom
Awesome, thanks for making this! Any plans to update the URL hash so a current
view can be shared with a link? I would think it wouldn't be too difficult
since there are only a handful of variables. I (and HN) would be glad to
contribute if desired.

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shriphani
Hi,

I am not the creator - I merely stumbled across this site.

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suneilp
Far-infrared and microwave look cool. Some keyboard controls for panning would
be nice.

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hliyan
I wonder if this says more about our sensor technologies than how the galaxy
actually looks (the visible, infrared and microwave images look far richer
than the others).

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TeMPOraL
They're false-color so if anything, this says more about our Photoshop
choices.

~~~
jacobolus
It would be awesome to see a separate grayscale (or at least same-color-
gradient) image at every wavelength they’ve recorded, with color scaling based
on radiant flux and consistent across images. (Could be log-scaled or whatever
if some of the images would otherwise be too dim.)

Even better would be to show a large chart of all those images at once, so
they could be compared on a large display without needing to scrub a slider
back and forth.

With these false color images, it’s impossible to know without careful
investigation what the colors in each image represent or how they’re mixed
together, and it’s impossible to make useful comparisons.

~~~
privong
> Even better would be to show a large chart of all those images at once, so
> they could be compared on a large display without needing to scrub a slider
> back and forth.

See the "Multiwavelength Milky Way" poster from NASA:
[http://mwmw.gsfc.nasa.gov/mmw_product.html#poster](http://mwmw.gsfc.nasa.gov/mmw_product.html#poster)
They're still false-color and only show the plane of the galaxy, but you can
at least see them all simultaneously.

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nitrogen
Very cool. It would be interesting to rework the slider as an RGB channel
mixer that slides different observational wavelengths across the monitor's
color channels, instead of just blending between images.

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dang
From 2009:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=979705](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=979705).

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eternalban
Anyone know what to make of the (black) streak feature that is only present in
the x-ray?

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oaktowner
Repeating solaris999's comment above: The "What am I looking at?" section
([http://www.chromoscope.net/1.4.1/what.html](http://www.chromoscope.net/1.4.1/what.html))
says that they are: "Don't worry, they aren't holes in the Universe being
ripped open by creatures from another dimension! They are actually just gaps
in the survey."

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Diti
Completely unusable on mobile. (Firefox Android)

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vortico
Then get off your telephone and open your laptop. It's a resource-intensive
application, merging and stitching a hundred tiles simultaneously.

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Diti
If I take the time to complain, it's because I don't have access to a
computer, and that I believe the website's devs could improve it. I do believe
they didn't test it with Firefox. It's all Webkit these days. :B

~~~
htaunay
It's also fine on Firefox/Windows 10

