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Recently Discovered Habitable World May Not Exist

news.sciencemag.org

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Re: Recently Discovered Habitable World May Not Exist

#11

Post by sigstoat »

windsurfer wrote: post #6
sigstoat wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks should keep this in mind when they get agitated about the possibility of NASA getting rid of Hubble. Basically all of your pretty space pictures are false color, so it doesn't matter which space telescope produces them.

How are the hubble's images any more "false color" than my digital SLR?

i don't think there is a single instrument on Hubble which is confined to the human visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, or any subset thereof. and i'd be amazed if duplicating the color response curves of the human eye was a design consideration.

unlike your DSLR (unless you popped the IR filter off of it).

Re: Recently Discovered Habitable World May Not Exist

#15

Post by rflrob »

Well darn. I looked at the data they'd published saying they'd found the planet, and while it seemed tenuous to me, I should've gone on record somewhere saying so. On the other hand, I'm not a planetary astronomer, so my I'm not really qualified to tell what is strong data or not, so I just trusted the reviewers.

Re: Recently Discovered Habitable World May Not Exist

#16

Post by InclinedPlane »

mcantor wrote: post #4

This is basically irrelevant to the linked post, but I have to ask: Was I the only one who felt crushed, betrayed and crestfallen upon making the terrible realization that space doesn't actually look like all of the awesome "photos" floating around? Like the Eagle Nebula's "Pillars of Creation" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Nebula ). Sure, that's technically what it "looks like," but the colors are all determi…

The "pillars of creation" image does not contain x-ray data, I believe you misread something out of that wiki article in believing so. The particular image is not true color, but it's also not just a photoshop job, it represents a very real view of the Eagle nebula, just not one your human eyes could see.

For an actual true color (for humans) image of the Eagle nebula, try this: http://eaglenebula.net/astronomy/astrophotos/The_Eagle_Nebul...

Re: Recently Discovered Habitable World May Not Exist

#17

Post by InclinedPlane »

gaius wrote: post #7
windsurfer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are the hubble's images any more "false color" than my digital SLR?

Because when you assign a visible colour to a particular invisible wavelength, you can choose whatever colour you like. If you went there and looked with the naked eye, you'd see just black.

You wouldn't just see black, you'd see a different set of colors, generally more muted than the false-color pictures from telescopes.

Re: Recently Discovered Habitable World May Not Exist

#18

Post by InclinedPlane »

The title is a bit overdramatic given the actual situation.

One team detected has produced evidence of a particular planet, another team has attempted to corroborate that evidence and could not, though their instruments are not sensitive enough to rule out said planet. And thus we await more data.

This is a tempest in a teapot.

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