By far the coolest part about studying the space sciences are the images that come out of our vast array of satellites. The following picture is from the Spitzer Space Telescope and is of the center of our home galaxy in the infrared spectrum.
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| tip of the hat to NASA on this one |
As humans we are used to perceiving objects in the visible light spectrum. While this is a handy realm of light, visible light has a very hard time passing through the immense dust clouds that dot the galaxy and thus, we have a hard time capturing images of the densest parts of the universe. Thanks to Spitzer, we can image some of these places outside the realm of visible light and thus can see through these unfortunate dust clouds.
Sweet picture...When was the Spitzer put into space and is there something special about it?
ReplyDeleteI used to think light outside of the visible spectrum was lame - I wanted to see what colors things are!
ReplyDeleteBut then I realized that the "colors" of visible light was relative anyway, and you miss so much of the universe if you ignore the rest of the spectrum.
Space images are cool. I never get tired of looking at them
Gorgeous!
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