What We Can See

I asked this elsewhere, but I am sure it got buried, so it gets its own thread. What I would like to ask is:

Has anyone spotted an unambiguous face-on spiral galaxy anywhere?
Should we be able to see Herbig Haro objects in any of these images?
The Bok globules I have seen all look very hard edged in visible light. Do they still look like that in infrared? They're pretty cold, so I'm guessing they still look black, at least--is that right?

Basically: is the scale of these images such that we could see these things if they were present to begin with? I think it would be incredibly cool to spot either #2 or #3, especially #2.

Snarkhunter

Posted June 15, 2011 4:53 PM

by broomrider1970

I can only answer question # 1

and my answer to that is an emphatic No.

With a heartfelt and disappointed sigh added to that No.
I've gone through SOooo many images I'm very frustrated by that. Pretty disgusted too.

As for 2 and 3 I've no clue on them but I suspect eventually I will figure them out. 😉

Good luck Ken!

~Bright Blessings
Tina

Posted June 15, 2011 5:10 PM

by Ken_Koester

Actually, you've got one in your Very Interesting collection--it's the same view as is the background to the project. the Pillars of Creation shot, IIRC. I've got a close up on my wall. On the left of the 3 fingers, there are a couple of HH objects near the tip. But in this view, you can only see them, barely, as about 1 or 2 pixels long. There's also a small spike near the head of the isolated finger to the left; that might be one. Don't have it in the blow-up, so not sure. Wiki says that in IR, the v-shaped clouds we see in these views might be HH objects. Apparently there's a difference in the surrounding gases that makes an IR jet look different than an optical one.

Heck, I should have realized all this myself; I recognized the opening screen after all. Shame on me! But, I'd still like a mission specialist to comment either way (-: And I think scrutinizing that view & comparing it to the Hubble blowup could be instructive (-:

Snarkhunter

Posted June 15, 2011 6:57 PM

by broomrider1970

HH? IIRC? Sorry Ken but I'm clueless as to the meaning of these. I'm just a housewife with not much knowledge of these. But loads of interest. Can you explain for me pretty please? 😄

Posted June 15, 2011 8:20 PM

by Ken_Koester

IIRC = "If I Recall Correctly". IR = "Infra Red". IR is longer wavelength than your eye can see, but you can feel it as heat; that's what a heat lamp puts out, mostly. An IR telescope collects photons from those longer wavelengths, then the software translates them to a (false) visible light color, or in this case, several colors. So, no, these clouds wouldn't actually look green & red if you could see them up close and personal. But they sure look pretty this way (-:

You do the IR (& sub-millimeter wave radio) thing because these photons can get past the dust, show you the inner part of where interesting things happen. Whereas visible light photons can't do it. This is near & dear to my heart because the thing I most want to study is star formation--so I have the strangest feeling I'll be hitting this data again someday in the not-too-distant future (-:

Snarkhunter

Posted June 16, 2011 12:45 PM

by broomrider1970

Oh Man! Do I feel dense LOL IR should have been something I knew automatically, being my husband has mentioned it many times. Doh! Ah well....that fibro fog hits again! Thank you for the small lesson today Ken. I truly do appreciate it. I absolutely Love the images here on the milky way project, from spitzer and the hubble scope too. I wish so much that I had a telescope to view the night sky.

Good Luck to you on your future Ken, I wish you the absolute best! It's a wonderful awe inspiring subject. 😄 Even if crawling up on my garage to view space junk burning through the atmosphere with my daughter scared me to tears(terrified of heights on man made objects), it certainly was absolutely wonderful to see it! 😄

~Bright Blessings!
Tina

Posted June 16, 2011 4:58 PM