Hubble image of centre of Omega Centauri

[Paddy]

For all those who wonder what it looks like in the middle of Omega Centauri...

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

[leon]

Thanks for the heads up Patrick, but I reckon that image looks bloody awful, I think I will just stick with Omega the way she looks from Earth.

Leon

[renormalised]

Very interesting image. Somewhere in there is a black hole of about 40,000 solar masses.

[stephenb]

Look amazing, thanks Patrick.

But I know where you're coming from, Leon... There's is something about that familiar image of Omega Centauri that we're used to.

[Screwdriverone]

:cool: Disco anyone?

I agree with Leon.

Nice to know, bloody 'orrible to look at.

Give me my 12" Flex dob at 75x mag any day.

Cheers

Chris

[DavidU]

Thats not a very tidy image at all. I saw one of Hubbles Omega Cent a few days ago and it was great.
Something has gone wrong

[stephenb]

Is this it?

http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/screen/heic0809a.jpg

I'm sure I saw it here on an IIS thread?

[Paddy]

I have to agree that it's pretty hard to go past the vision through my scope from the backyard!

[DavidU]

I think NASA should get Martin, Mike,Marc or one of the boys to show them how to process an image properly.

[Robh]

The picture has very little meaning without some idea of the scale.
Is its dimensions in a few arcminutes or, perhaps, a few arcseconds?

Regards, Rob

[renormalised]

It's the centre of the cluster, so it'd be the very inner few light years....a couple of arsecs at its distance. Plus, I think they've overdone the colours a bit to emphasise the types of stars that are there. If you know what you're looking at, it's a very interesting image.

[mswhin63]

Great way to create attention for the general public. They more than likely have a publicist or media expert.

To coin a religious statement "not preaching to the converted"

[Omaroo]

It would be difficult to get to sleep, hey! There wouldn't be many places to hide from sunlight coming from somewhere. With stars only about 6,000AU (0.1 LY) from each other, it's pretty crowded in there. I reckon that it's an incredible photo, and if you consider that the smallest red dots are probably suns too, and not noise, it's a pretty wild scene. :) Mac-mazing!

[g__day]

I reckon they ran out of time so someone simply took a shot of their Christmas decorations and ran it through a Photoshop filter. Not the sort of shot I expected from the Big Boys.

[renormalised]

The problem here is too many people have been sold on the pretty pics that Hubble normally shows off to the public, that when a mundane, not so spectacular shot like this turns up, everyone goes "Geez guys, that's not what we expected". 90% of the shots taken by Hubble are exactly like this. All those spectacular shots are mainly just for show, some science thrown in, but mainly to "impress the natives".

[sjastro]

Agreed. I mentioned in another thread that there a 2 types of Hubble pictures, one for the scientists, the other for public viewing.

This one must have accidentally slipped into the public domain.:)

Steven

[astroron]

I was just about to say something similar;)
The Hubble Space Telescope is Primeraly a science instrument, not just for taking pretty pictures;)
The aim of the picture was to show the types and density of the stars in the center of the cluster.
The blurb at the bottom explained this as such:thumbsup:

[snas]

Someone (non-astronomer) sent me a link to 10 Hubble photos, one of which was Omega Centauri. What I saw on that was the same photo with no diffraction spikes on the stars. Agreed I do not like the image shown here but without the diffraction spikes you actually get to see the stars qnd it all looks much better. Still like the idea that I can just make out Omega centauri with naked eye and it looks great through my scope.
Stuart

[renormalised]

You have to have some knowledge of what you're looking at to really appreciate a photo like this. Most run of the mill amateurs and/or the general public, not knowing exactly what's there and the physics involved, wouldn't. There's a lot more to those pretty pics that Hubble takes than just show. Although, that's all most people see, and that's also good. It's like free advertising for science, and we need as much as we can get.

[Archy]

you're pulling my leg: It looks like and is titled "Tarantula":)

[MrB]

The link in the original post is to the current day's APOD, so the Tarantula is todays and the Omega Cent is now the day before yesterdays.. and can be seen here:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090914.html (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090915.html)

[OzRob]

I think it is this one from a few days ago:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090914.html

edit: ooops it looks like I was a little late..:D

[Vartigy]

Don't forget to take yer suncream when visiting there.

Not to mention, I didn't recognise a single constellation in that image. Too much colour. But pretty looking none-the-less.

[Archy]

Thanks for that.
I have downloaded an 11 MB image and I think I can see in the image many instances of gravitational lensing.
What do others think?