Chris Lintott’s Universe

Having publicised the 2mass survey earlier in the month, I can’t resist posting links to a couple of other nice movies which illustrate our place in space.

The first starts off by flying toward Orion, past some of the galaxy’s highlights before heading to the Virgo cluster via M81 and M82 (a galaxy close to my heart as I’m working on a paper about its chemistry), while the second shows the Sloan Digitial Sky Survey’s half-a-million or so galaxies in all their glory. (The strange shape is because of where astronomers have chosen to look on the sky, rather than a real future of the Universe).

Sometimes, all too rarely, there is a news story which needs no further explanation. How wonderful is this image? The rovers have been doing incredible things (and I’m looking forward to interviewing their creator, Steve Squyers, again next month) but to see one of them from orbit just illustrates how rapidly Mars exploration is advancing.

More Mars over the weekend…

UPDATE : I forgot to add these pictures and reconstructions which were sent in by Stuart Atkinson.

The fourth of the entries in the Sky at Night magazine’s ‘Hotshots’ competition is our second photo of the Great Orion nebula, M42, which couldn’t look much different from the last one. This one was taken through narrowband filters in order to avoid the worst of the light pollution, which seems to have brought out the extended emission nicely.

More content to follow with any luck later today, but for now here’s the third of the hotshots; the Moon over St Paul’s cathedral. I really can’t make up my mind over this shot. The cross in front of the full Moon is fantastic, but the plane (amusing though it is) seems to detract from the sight. I end up looking at the cross, and then the plane, and then back to the cross again, and never really looking at the Moon. Still, make your own minds up.

The second entry for the competition is this shot of the great Orion nebula. This happens to be my favourite object in the sky (and if it isn’t yours, why on Earth not?); I saw it first through my own six inch reflector, on a very dark and clear night and I can still remember the feeling as the sheer three-dimensional nature of it struck me. I also remember the colour; a green that you just don’t seen anywhere else, so I’m always slightly biased against pictures that show it as pink. Don’t let that put you off, though.

One of the most enjoyable tasks I’ve had in the last few weeks (along with moving office to a different city, and finding a flat, and submitting my thesis…) was judging the Sky at Night magazine’s photo competition. Now, they’re not having any sort of public vote, relying on a panel of judges to select ‘Hotshots image of the year’, but the images are so good I thought I’d post them here over the next two weeks or so.

I’ll reveal who took what once all eleven are up. The first is below.

I’ve been talking a lot recently about the impact of seeing the Earth as a planet for the first time; perhaps the most enduring legacy of Apollo is the image that we all have of a round Earth hanging in space. Interestingly, it seems that this wasn’t something the astronauts had particularly thought about seeing (concentrating instead on what the Moon itself would look like) but it is something that appears in their accounts time and time again. For a later generation, Carl Sagan’s magnificent description of a ‘Pale Blue Dot’ as seen by Voyager will stick in the mind.

Well, we have another image. Cassini, now in orbit around Saturn, has just captured the first colour image of the Earth from the outer solar system to be taken for twenty years or so. It’s stunning to see our planet in perspective like this, isn’t it?

Oh, and go and vote for the incredible aurora picture in the BBC’s photographic competition, please.