Click here for a larger image
Every week, I take a few minutes to wander through iTunes video podcasts to see what’s been added. Especially in 16×9 format for HD TV sets.
Last night, I noticed a new listing [with several vidcasts already in place] for the Spitzer Telescope. I subscribed and downloaded them all. After supper, my wife and I tend to watch whatever’s waiting on the AppleTV before moving on to the DVR – and what a delight was waiting from the CalTech folks and Spitzer.
This was our favorite. Right-click and download or left-click to play – and enjoy some fine Ken Burns editing and incredible images. The .m4v file size is just over 54mb for just under 2 minutes of video.
I do assume your “I don’t watch TV” and “HDTV won’t improve crap TV” filters are on? Thanks for some great images. “I want my HDTV!”
Is there an RSS feed for the movies? I briefly looked at the site specified at the end of the video and didn’t see one with movies on it.
Thanks
TV networks will soon be located next the typewriter factory, across the street from the newspaper.
The colors were arbitrarily added to the images. As vivid colors don’t exist on deep space. Or the telescopic devices use to detect such faint light sources, isn’t designed to pick up and distinguish colors, even if they did exist. So these images were post-processed, and the colors played around with to get the best “Wow” factor for the public. But scientifically, it’s an inaccurate color enhancement procedure. Sorry to be a spoil-sport about yer fun. But to me this is more science as PR, than serious data.
Spitzer RSS feeds of several flavors are available at:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/podcasts/index.shtml
#3 Oh no they won’t!!!
Remember Cable TV’s hook line back in the early 80’s “Commercial Free”? HA! did everyone fall for that one! 😆
Cheers
That’s pretty cool stuff. I don’t see it in my TV guide though; just more WWF Smackdown, reality TV, and D-list movies….
Nice Luddite response – #4 – loaded with ignorance. Artifically manipulating colors to investigate specific aspects of research are as old as staining samples on a glass slide for microscopic investigation.
Sorry if that affronts your preconceptions. On 2nd thought – I’m not sorry.
4,
“But to me this is more science as PR, than serious data.”
Since it was intended for the general public, what is the harm in that? The scientists have their hard data already.
Well no one mentioned that Eta Carinae is the most unusual star yet observed.
http://seds.org/messier/xtra/ngc/etacar.html
Eta Carinae is one of the most massive stars yet observed with an estimated mass more than 100 times of our sun. It has varied in brightness from invisibility to almost as bright as Sirius.
Cheers
Very impressive. What I love about looking at anything to do with looking into the vastness of space of is: It proves exactly how little we know about anything!
As my mother used to say (and still does sometimes): “You know what, we don’t know shit.”
Beautiful Image!! We live in such an amazing universe. It constantly amazes me that people would want to belittle it by invoking a creator over it or worse, by claiming this vast and ancient universe is less than 10,000 years old. How silly!
12–Yes–one of the popular anti-religion guys was on tv with a thumper and the thumper says “Isn’t the universe such a wonderful beautiful place just specially made for us?”
And ((I LOVE it when basic assumptions are identified and challenged)) the science guy said “Actually, no. The universe is a huge and mostly empty space that is completely hostile to life and especially humanoid/intelligent life. Not well designed for humans at all.”
Course in our fast food culture, nothing wrong with thinking that something that is 99.999999999999999999999999% hostile to us, is nonetheless especially thoughtfully well designed for us. yuk,yuk.
Great, now that i’ve subscribed to this new video podcast, I also found Hidden Universe HD: NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, that means I have two more video casts downloading to my hard drive that I don’t really have time to watch and will let fill up my hd.
Can I get a clone so I can get stuff done AND watch all this new content at the same time?
>>It constantly amazes me that people would want to belittle
>>it by invoking a creator.
Pffft. As Ben Waymark’s wise mother says, “you don’t know shit”.
Adding color makes it easier to see the Virgin Mary.
Could make it cheese-colored.
Just remember that the Guy who created that for our benefit, in spite of acting exactly like an egotistical, malicious, drunk-with-power human tyrant, only expects you to spend a small part of your time on Earth telling Him how wonderful He is… 😉
#7 “…TV guide though; just more WWF Smackdown, reality TV, and D-list movies….”
“One Drop Reveals the Ocean” 😆
Cheers
#18 – Lauren,
Narcissistic sky bastard, isn’t s/he?
Narcissistic? Try ‘insecure’ and ‘needy’.
Be certain of 1 thing, M Scott; it’s a sort of litmus test for true intelligence.
If you can actually entertain for even a moment the childishly absurd idea that whatever entity created or set into motion the Universe would be concerned with – much less demand – praise from humans…. and you live today, not 2000 years ago… then you flunk.
When that monster really goes supernova, I want to be far enough away so I can say, “What the heck was that?” 🙂
About 150 years ago, it was one of the brightest stars in the southern sky. Even though it released as much visible light as a supernova explosion, it survived the outburst. Very strange indeed.
Wish I could observe it from the US.
#22 – BR
“When that monster really goes supernova, I want to be far enough away so I can say, “What the heck was that?””
If you are planning on being significantly farther away, I would humbly suggest you get to packing those bags… 😉
I can see Jesus AND the Virgin Mary in this. 🙂
Wonder if I can sell it on EBay?
13. Bobbo: I have to say, its quite funny this idea that some people have that the universe was created just for us… I mean, how much of a sheltered life do you have to lead to think that everything is just there for you…. surely its people who have never actually worked a proper job in their life, never tried to grow their potatoes just watch the bastard beetles eat them all, never looked closely at the huge destructive power a small little stream can have, given enough time…
its one of the many things I really like about Norse mythology: the world view is that we are perched on precariously on a tree, with roots in the ground that are rotting, goats that are eating up all the leaves, an eagle perched at the top, and a serpent at the bottom, and a squirl running up down the tree carrying insult between the eagle and the serpent. “Yggdrasil (the name of the world tree) creaks, Yggdrasil moans” the poem goes.
Someone that feels much more akin to life in this world than the deranged fantasies of a some preachers who seems to think we’ve never actually left the garden of Eden and that, despite a mountain of Biblical evidence to the contrary, that God gives his followers an easy, wealthy and pleasant life.
well, scientifically accurate or not still a good show. thanks for the link!
PS: I REALLY hope that if eta carinae goes nova, then the gamma-radiation beam isnt pointed at us… cuz thta’d suck hard
#8 – Nice Luddite response.
I don’t see how expecting “truth in advertizing” from a scientific establishment, as being a Luddite response. If the images had been properly labeled as “color enhancement added” or something. I would have had no problem with them. But I didn’t see anything except two views (large and small) labeled as which light band was detected.
The “visible” field implies that those are the colors we’d see if we too had a very expensive telescope. NOT SO!! And the “infrared” is even worse, at imply an array of colors seen in so narrow a band of light. It’s clearly meant to WOW the ignore. So forgive me for not being so ignorant a luddite as to accept improperly labeled images. Which any amatuer would be criticized for, if they cranked out their own photoshoped view of the universe, that competed with NASA’s product. It’s bad science to omit information just for PR sake. There was plenty of room in the border of the picture to label this properly.
That asidn…. It was a pretty picture. But I liked the old Battlestar Galactica “Red Nova” better.
WTF does “truth in advertising” have to do with it? They’re not advertising the fucking thing. They’re not selling you anything. They’re not asking you for anything. They have no motive to fool you or anyone else. All they did was make something obscure highly visible and therefore more easiily comprehensible to a general audience. If you think that making something easier to see and appreciate comes under the heading of “dishonesty”, you may need to work on those persecution ‘n paranoia issues. 😉