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Massive panoramic photo of Orion Nebula (324,000,000 pixels)

jayscheuerle said:
I can't seem to find any information in megapixel terms either, but you can bet that this is comprised of hundreds, if not thousands of frames. Each frame may contain many exposures as well.

"This extensive study took 105 Hubble orbits to complete. All imaging instruments aboard the telescope – the ACS, Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, and Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer – were used simultaneously to study the nebula. The ACS mosaic covers approximately the apparent angular size of the full moon." (from the image's site.)
Click to expand...


The Advanced Camera for Survyes (ACS) is actually several cameras in one.

Wide Field Camera: http://acs.pha.jhu.edu/instrument/detectors/WFC/
# 350 - 1050 nanometer spectral response
# 202" × 202" field of view
# 0.049" pixel size
# 2 butted 2048 × 4096, 15 µm/pixel CCD detectors

High Resolution Channel: http://acs.pha.jhu.edu/instrument/detectors/HRC/

# 200 - 1050 nanometer spectral response
# 29.1" × 26.1" field of view
# 0.028" × 0.025" pixel size
# 1024 × 1024, 21 µm/pixel, near UV-enhanced CCD detector

Solar Blind Camera:

# 115 - 180 nanometer spectral response
# 34.59" × 30.8" field of view
# 0.033" × 0.030" pixel size
# 1024 × 1024, Csl 25 µm/pixel MAMA detector (STIS spare)
 
Not a bad image from a camera that has 800x800 pixels. That's a lot of stitched photos.
 
I think, just a hypothesis, that this place is going to give google maps a run for its money. I mean imagine the possibilities...! ;)
 
a stunning project and image, indeed.

but may i bitch for a moment?

i d/loaded the 24 meg jpeg and opened it in preview. eventually. i didn't time it, but it took something like 5 minutes to open and brought my powermac to its knees. my dual g5, 2.0 GHz powermac w/ 2 gig of RAM to its knees.

why is this? if the image were several gig, i'd understand. but i've got a damn powerful computer that can't even handle a large image. where is the breakdown? is it some deficiency in the 970 design? the motherboard design? does osx not handle this stuff well? preview? my 128 meg ATI video card? what is it?

it's the 21st century, goddamnit. when are these macs gonna start acting like it?
 
wow, I just opened my activity monitor... I have 2GB of RAM, and this pic is eating 922.65MB of it... and 1.09GB of VRAM...

wow!
 
zimv20 said:
a stunning project and image, indeed.

but may i bitch for a moment?

i d/loaded the 24 meg jpeg and opened it in preview. eventually. i didn't time it, but it took something like 5 minutes to open and brought my powermac to its knees. my dual g5, 2.0 GHz powermac w/ 2 gig of RAM to its knees.

why is this? if the image were several gig, i'd understand. but i've got a damn powerful computer that can't even handle a large image. where is the breakdown? is it some deficiency in the 970 design? the motherboard design? does osx not handle this stuff well? preview? my 128 meg ATI video card? what is it?

it's the 21st century, goddamnit. when are these macs gonna start acting like it?
Click to expand...

Breakdown is in the application, not the machine. Try Photoshop, with an external chosen for primary scratch disc space.

The jpeg opened up to 900+MB.
 
For those who can't open the image. Here are a few zooms to give you an idea of the incredible level of detail. I've indicated in each shot the area corresponding to the next shot.

The last frame (500x500px) is in 1:1 scale with the original picture

_
 

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dogbone said:
Remember that scene from Start Trek when Q slung the Enterprise so far out into space that even if the spaceship was travelling at it's top speed of 10 x the speed of light it would have taken them 700 years to get back to Earth? Well they hadn't even left the milky way galaxy.
Click to expand...

Woah... OT trekkiness... I love it :rolleyes: ! I thought that was the best episode, and I was thinking about it the other day... you don't happen to know the name of it do ya? :p :eek:

Back on-topic... even the 6000x6000 image is huge. I don't think I'll torture my eMac with the mega-sized one, however.
 
jayscheuerle said:
Breakdown is in the application, not the machine. Try Photoshop, with an external chosen for primary scratch disc space.

The jpeg opened up to 900+MB.
Click to expand...
thanks for that.
 
dogbone said:
More amazingness:... <snip> When two galaxies of a hundred billion stars each collide the stars are so far apart that it is unlikely that any individual stars will collide.
Click to expand...
So what you are telling me is that the MW galaxy and pretty much the entire universe is... huge? So large in fact, we ourselves cannot comprehend the utter humongousness of it all.

p.s. I did see that Q episode. I've seen every one of the ST:TNG episode and I didn't know they were still in the Milky Way galaxy. Do you remember when Barclay went superbrainiac and created a rip in space and sent the Enterprise to the center of the universe where they met a bigheaded God?
Here's to the Crazy Ones ​
 
"Cannot complete your request because of a program error"

So says Photoshop 7. I opened up the 6000 pixel image, and tweaked it a little using curves. But I am unable to save it in any format. Photoshop is the only program open (I rebooted the computer) and it has plenty of available RAM according to the scratch size (185/605 MB). Any ideas what's going on? Resizing makes no difference either, so it seems to be an issue with that particular file (others are fine). Anyone else having troubles? :confused:

EDIT: I should add, I downloaded the tif version, but the jpeg file does the same thing. Totally weird.
 
Lacero said:
So what you are telling me is that the MW galaxy and pretty much the entire universe is... huge? So large in fact, we ourselves cannot comprehend the utter humongousness of it all.

p.s. I did see that Q episode. I've seen every one of the ST:TNG episode and I didn't know they were still in the Milky Way galaxy. Do you remember when Barclay went superbrainiac and created a rip in space and sent the Enterprise to the center of the universe where they met a bigheaded God?
Here's to the Crazy Ones ​
Click to expand...


Two things:

The Orion Nebuale is very close to us. The light only takes 1600 to get to us ;)

The other thing, I believe that Q took them to the other side of our galaxy... You know, thou I am an astronomer I am still a human so I don't really know that much... But the Universe is big enough to inspire me with awe, even being the subject of my everyday study...

EDIT: Ok, I had only read the thread superficially... I see now that is what you were saying...
 
srobert said:
For those who can't open the image. Here are a few zooms to give you an idea of the incredible level of detail. I've indicated in each shot the area corresponding to the next shot.

The last frame (500x500px) is in 1:1 scale with the original picture

_
Click to expand...

thanks for that. :) i am too nervous to open the big one... i'm rather unlucky and don't want to somehow cause a problem with my one functioning mac right now. :eek:

it looks amazing.
 
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