41–50 of 172 posts
Counter-rotating spiral galaxies. Super neat! https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=186.66721+8.89072&fov=0.2...
https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=186.66721+8.89072&fov=0.2...
https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=185.46019+4.48014&fov=0.6...
https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=188.49629+8.40493&fov=1.3...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is interesting! They look like they're roughly in the same plane. Is it safe to assume they're roughly in the same plane, or could they be really distant along the line of sight? The similarity in size makes me think they are, but I don't have any reason to be confident in that judgment.
Those are NGC 4411 a+b and they're indeed right next to each other, https://noirlab.edu/public/images/iotw2421b/ ( "thought to be right next to each other — both at a distance of about 50 million light-years" )
The asteroid detection capability is amazing: https://rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-first-look/swarm-ast...
Which also tells the astronomical low odds of asteroids hitting earth even with “so many” of them. To me it changes nothing
Doing some extremely rough math along these lines to double check myself:
* Gemini says that a dinosaur-extincting asteroid hits Earth about once every 100 million years. So in any given year that's 0.000001%.
* Economists say a human life is worth about 10 million dollars. There are about 8 billion people on Earth. So the total value of all human life is $80,000,000,000,000,000 (or 8e+16).
* So in any given year, the present value of asteroid protection is $800,000,000 (likelihood of an impact that year times value of the human life it would wipe out).
* The Guardian says the Vera Rubin telescope cost about $2,000,000,000 (2 billion).
By that measure, assuming the Rubin telescope prevents any dinosaur-extinction-level asteroid impacts, it will pay for itself in three years.
Here's the SDSS view[0] of this featured[1] section from the Virgo Cluster, in comparison, to put the staggering depth of these exposures in their proper context, [0] https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?target=12%2026%205... [1] https://rubinobservatory.org/gallery/collections/first-look-...
https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?baseImageLayer=CDS...
The image of the woman holding the model of the sensor is nice because it includes a moon for scale.
Question I was curious about is whether or not the focal plane was flat (it is).
This is an interesting tidbit:
> Once images are taken, they are processed according to three different timescales, prompt (within 60 seconds), daily, and annually.
> The prompt products are alerts, issued within 60 seconds of observation, about objects that have changed brightness or position relative to archived images of that sky position. Transferring, processing, and differencing such large images within 60 seconds (previous methods took hours, on smaller images) is a significant software engineering problem by itself. This stage of processing will be performed at a classified government facility so events that would reveal secret assets can be edited out.
They are estimating 10 million alerts per night, which will be released publicly after the previously mentioned assessment takes place.
The wikipedia article is quite good - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_C._Rubin_Observatory (Edit: Treasure trove of details in the references if any of your interests are adjacent to this) The image of the woman holding the model of the sensor is nice because it includes a moon for scale. Question I was curious about is whether or not the focal plane was flat (it is). This is an interesting tidbit: > Once images a…
>This stage of processing will be performed at a classified government facility so events that would reveal secret assets can be edited out.
Interesting, I'm guessing secret spy satellites?
The zoomed images look grainy as one would expect from raw data, but I would have expected them to do dark field subtraction for the chips to minimize this effect. Does anyone know if that's done (or expressly avoided) in this context, or why it might not be as helpful (e.g., for longer exposures)?
https://docushare.lsstcorp.org/docushare/dsweb/Get/LSE-163/L...
The wikipedia article is quite good - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_C._Rubin_Observatory (Edit: Treasure trove of details in the references if any of your interests are adjacent to this) The image of the woman holding the model of the sensor is nice because it includes a moon for scale. Question I was curious about is whether or not the focal plane was flat (it is). This is an interesting tidbit: > Once images a…
>The prompt products are alerts, issued within 60 seconds of observation, about objects that have changed brightness or position relative to archived images of that sky position. Transferring, processing, and differencing such large images within 60 seconds (previous methods took hours, on smaller images) is a significant software engineering problem by itself.[64] >This stage of processing will be performed at a cla…
The wikipedia article is quite good - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_C._Rubin_Observatory (Edit: Treasure trove of details in the references if any of your interests are adjacent to this) The image of the woman holding the model of the sensor is nice because it includes a moon for scale. Question I was curious about is whether or not the focal plane was flat (it is). This is an interesting tidbit: > Once images a…
>The prompt products are alerts, issued within 60 seconds of observation, about objects that have changed brightness or position relative to archived images of that sky position. Transferring, processing, and differencing such large images within 60 seconds (previous methods took hours, on smaller images) is a significant software engineering problem by itself.[64] >This stage of processing will be performed at a cla…
The wikipedia article is quite good - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_C._Rubin_Observatory (Edit: Treasure trove of details in the references if any of your interests are adjacent to this) The image of the woman holding the model of the sensor is nice because it includes a moon for scale. Question I was curious about is whether or not the focal plane was flat (it is). This is an interesting tidbit: > Once images a…
>The prompt products are alerts, issued within 60 seconds of observation, about objects that have changed brightness or position relative to archived images of that sky position. Transferring, processing, and differencing such large images within 60 seconds (previous methods took hours, on smaller images) is a significant software engineering problem by itself.[64] >This stage of processing will be performed at a cla…
The thing that really saddens me is that the military gets to filter the data first and scientists only get to see the already manipulated data instead of a raw feed from their own instrument.