The Sombero Galaxy - Voted the best picture taken by the Hubble telescope.

sanaxe1 · 6 Dec 2009 at 12:09

The Sombrero Galaxy – 28 million light years from Earth. The dimensions of the galaxy, officially called M104, are as spectacular as its appearance. It has 800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across.

Wicksta · 6 Dec 2009 at 12:13

I'm always underwhelmed by these kind of photos after working with the astronomers who work with hubble and a few large radio telescopes. I'm not sure they should even be called photos with the amount of redrawing and colouring in that is done with them, you might as well be looking at a computer generated image, in fact you pretty much are, albeit an accurately laid out one.

PermaBanned · 6 Dec 2009 at 12:15

You do realize that most of the time they have to be redrawn and coloured so that we can even see them?

Ziggy · 6 Dec 2009 at 12:17

Wicksta said:
I'm always underwhelmed by these kind of photos after working with the astronomers who work with hubble and a few large radio telescopes. I'm not sure they should even be called photos with the amount of redrawing and colouring in that is done with them, you might as well be looking at a computer generated image, in fact you pretty much are, albeit an accurately laid out one.

That's interesting. So what do the actual images Hubble captures look like in their raw form?

Wicksta · 6 Dec 2009 at 12:17

Superewza said:
You do realize that most of the time they have to be redrawn and coloured so that we can even see them?

Err yes, I worked for one of the largest astronomical organisations in the world for 3 years, hence I find these photos completely 'meh' because they aren't photos at all.

Wicksta · 6 Dec 2009 at 12:19

Ziggy said:
That's interesting. So what do the actual images Hubble captures look like in their raw form?

I'm off out for lunch now, but I just found this which appears to be pretty accurate:

http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/team_hubble/

PermaBanned · 6 Dec 2009 at 12:24

Wicksta said:
Err yes, I worked for one of the largest astronomical organizations in the world for 3 years, hence I find these photos completely 'meh' because they aren't photos at all.

Interesting how you see that as a bad thing.

Stupot_ · 6 Dec 2009 at 12:33

Wicksta said:
I'm always underwhelmed by these kind of photos after working with the astronomers who work with hubble and a few large radio telescopes. I'm not sure they should even be called photos with the amount of redrawing and colouring in that is done with them, you might as well be looking at a computer generated image, in fact you pretty much are, albeit an accurately laid out one.

Don't agree with this, plenty af amateurs can take photos just as good as this. They just take stupidly long exposures.

I know this is no comparison, and a really bad example...! But I'm just posting it up because this was pretty much my very first image through a telescope, for a relatively short exposure, of andromeda galaxy.

Doesn't illustrate my point very well but if you look below the bright spot you can just about make out a dust lane, which with a much longer exposure (that was prob about 30s and limited by the tracking ability of my telescope) and dark skies couled definately turn in to something closely resembling the above picture.

Stupot_ · 6 Dec 2009 at 12:36

Here you go... standard equipment, with a DSLR... I like to think that if people can produce images like this in their gardens then hubble should do alright in space

http://www.veryamateur.co.uk/2009/09/10/m31-the-andromeda-galaxy/

Ziggy · 6 Dec 2009 at 12:51

Stupot_ said:
Here you go... standard equipment, with a DSLR... I like to think that if people can produce images like this in their gardens then hubble should do alright in space

http://www.veryamateur.co.uk/2009/09/10/m31-the-andromeda-galaxy/

I had no idea you could do that.

PermaBanned · 6 Dec 2009 at 12:52

Stupot_ said:
Here you go... standard equipment, with a DSLR... I like to think that if people can produce images like this in their gardens then hubble should do alright in space

http://www.veryamateur.co.uk/2009/09/10/m31-the-andromeda-galaxy/

That's amazing - i think i actually prefer it to the Hubble's

New desktop?

Ziggy · 6 Dec 2009 at 12:57

Found a good slideshow that shows step-by-step how Hubble images are made. It's by one of the scientists that took one of the most famous images.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0303/01-howi-flash.html

jr1104 · 6 Dec 2009 at 13:00

Great picture, even though I do realise that quite a lot of Hubble 'photos' are coloured and redrawn. I do quite a bit of night sky photography with my SLR, just need to save up and get enough equipment to be able to capture other galaxies.

Wicksta said:
Err yes, I worked for one of the largest astronomical organisations in the world for 3 years, hence I find these photos completely 'meh' because they aren't photos at all.

Out of interest, who was it you worked for, if you don't mind me asking?

Marky · 6 Dec 2009 at 13:05

Incredible picture! It makes you wonder what other worlds and civilisations there are out there!

sid · 6 Dec 2009 at 13:22

Ziggy said:
Found a good slideshow that shows step-by-step how Hubble images are made. It's by one of the scientists that took one of the most famous images.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0303/01-howi-flash.html

Hmm thats not too bad at all tbh, I was expecting more manipulation than that.

Its interesting that they have to tune the camera for specific wavelengths like that to make monochrome images.

We know what colour each wavelength looks like ( within reason of human spectrum) so its not as bad a fudge as it may appear. It probably doesn't look too different if we were to actually go there.

sid

James J · 6 Dec 2009 at 13:24

I think messier 64 is a better photo, black eye galaxy

iNPUt · 6 Dec 2009 at 13:24

Marky said:
Incredible picture! It makes you wonder what other worlds and civilisations there are out there!

Def is / has been. Can't have not been tbh.

Cosimo · 6 Dec 2009 at 14:10

sanaxe1 said:
The Sombrero Galaxy

That is quite an amazing picture, it's always great to see pictures from Hubble.

silversurfer · 6 Dec 2009 at 15:59

I prefer the lagoon nebula one

platypus · 6 Dec 2009 at 16:30

Wicksta said:
I'm always underwhelmed by these kind of photos after working with the astronomers who work with hubble and a few large radio telescopes. I'm not sure they should even be called photos with the amount of redrawing and colouring in that is done with them, you might as well be looking at a computer generated image, in fact you pretty much are, albeit an accurately laid out one.

They can be called photos, computer generated images or beansprout teapots for all I care.

They're awesome to look at

.