Comments on: Seeing the dark side

By: Robert Simpson

Robert Simpson — Wed, 16 May 2007 13:58:27 +0000

I think we all have to be careful abut how we present this result. Chris, you are in a particularly good position to help ensure that images like this are not shown as ‘images’ in the normal sense at all. You’re right when you say that NASA has gotten very good at making this look nice. In fact it almost looks real. But it isn’t real, the distribution of blue here is a representation of the effect of gravity, and we must be extra careful when trying to communicate this results to a non-astronomical audience.

By: Stuart

Stuart — Wed, 16 May 2007 08:17:18 +0000

I noticed that too. The ESA/Hubble press release does mention the Bullet Cluster. It says that in that case it was only the gas that was separated out, with the dark matter still following the distribution of galaxies. So the 'and' in the quote is important.

By: Alice Sheppard

Alice Sheppard — Wed, 16 May 2007 08:06:26 +0000

I like blue too – I had noticed one rarely seems to find it, as opposed to red, black, pink, green, etc., in astronomy.
Isn’t dark matter in a different structure from our Galaxy, if it’s making it rotate at the same speed at the edges as at the middle? I.e., more to the outside? (Don’t put that up if I’ve got that hideously wrong, please, Chris!)
In any case, quote from my tutor at Sussex: “The best science isn’t always when someone shouts ‘Eureka’. More often, it’s when someone looks at something and says, ‘That’s funny’.”