Movies and telescopes
Last night I watched the Percy Jackson Lightning Thief movie. It was okay. I enjoyed it. But I kept feeling confuzzled because I'd had the impression that Percy Jackson was, like, twelve. I checked the Wik and yes, he's supposed to be 12 in the first book. Huh. Imagine if Chris Columbus had tried to age up the Harry Potter characters. The whole big-giant-gods thing looked kinda silly.
I also finally saw Clash of the Titans. It was really not good. Several times I thought to myself, gosh, this might be kind of exciting if I had a clue what was going on. It was just like a bunch of stuff going on. And hello, Mads Mikkelsen was way more interesting than Sam "I am made of cardboard" Worthington. I just kept picturing Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes snickering to each other at the craft services table, going "I can't believe we're getting paid for this."
Man, I had a lazy long weekend. After hiking on Saturday I really did jack squat. I read, I wrote some, I watched some movies. Eric and I watched "Pitch Black" on SyFy last night. Damn, that is an awesome movie.
But now, because I know some of you love it, I bring you another Info Dump post of stuff! Yes, I read books about astronomy so you don't have to.
Interesting Facts about the Hubble Space Telescope!
The mirror defect in the original telescope was never fixed. First of all, to call it a "defect" is a bit disingenuous. Considering that grinding the mirror took TWO YEARS and it was done to within an accuracy of nanometers, it's kind of amazing that it came out as well as it did. A backup mirror was supposed to have been made at the same time but wasn't finished. Also the problem wasn't actually in the grinding but in the checking - the null corrector that was supposed to check the shape of the mirror was off. And the mirror is still off. The problem was fixed by fitting the telescope with corrective equipment to compensate for the error in the curvature. Essentially they gave it glasses.
The Hubble doesn't have a lens. Headlines frequently talk of objects as seen "through Hubble's lens." Like most large telescopes, there is no lens in the Hubble. It has a mirror. Lenses are only good in small telescopes; they quickly become too large to handle as the size of a telescope increases.
The Hubble doesn't go anyplace. There are misconceptions that the Hubble travels to photograph objects. Not true. It is parked in a low Earth orbit a few hundred kilometers up. It's only infinitesmally closer to distant space objects than we are here on earth. The reason the Hubble can see so well is because it doesn't have to look up through Earth's atmosphere, which is incredibly obfuscating to astronomy. Modern digital corrections for the atmospheric interference, though, may someday make space telescopes obsolete. With corrections like these, some land-based telescopes have been able to produce images that rival the Hubble's.
You have to apply for time on the Hubble. If you're an astronomer and you want to use Hubble, you have to apply for time on it, and your odds aren't good. One in six applications are rejected. You have to have a project that a) can't be done from Earth, b) doesn't duplicate something that's already been done and c) is judged to be a worthwhile use of the telescope's time. If you're approved then the real work starts. You have to submit super detailed plans of exactly where you want the telescope pointed, what you want to look at and for how long, blah blah blah. The upside is that the data you receive is yours and yours alone for a one-year proprietary period before it's made public. What's cool as well is that the Director decided awhile back that there would be a certain amount of time allotted for amateur astronomers to use Hubble. So there are some lucky high school students and astronomy hobbyists who've gotten to look at stuff with the Hubble. Nifty!
The Hubble can't be used for spying. Conspiracy theorists love to speculate about the Hubble being used to spy on Earth. But it can't. The Earth moves too fast for the Hubble's camera to resolve. Everything is a blurry streak.
The Hubble isn't the biggest telescope ever made. Not even close. It isn't actually all that big. It couldn't be too big, because it had to fit inside the space shuttle to be put in orbit. It's about the size of a bus.
I also finally saw Clash of the Titans. It was really not good. Several times I thought to myself, gosh, this might be kind of exciting if I had a clue what was going on. It was just like a bunch of stuff going on. And hello, Mads Mikkelsen was way more interesting than Sam "I am made of cardboard" Worthington. I just kept picturing Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes snickering to each other at the craft services table, going "I can't believe we're getting paid for this."
Man, I had a lazy long weekend. After hiking on Saturday I really did jack squat. I read, I wrote some, I watched some movies. Eric and I watched "Pitch Black" on SyFy last night. Damn, that is an awesome movie.
But now, because I know some of you love it, I bring you another Info Dump post of stuff! Yes, I read books about astronomy so you don't have to.
Interesting Facts about the Hubble Space Telescope!
The mirror defect in the original telescope was never fixed. First of all, to call it a "defect" is a bit disingenuous. Considering that grinding the mirror took TWO YEARS and it was done to within an accuracy of nanometers, it's kind of amazing that it came out as well as it did. A backup mirror was supposed to have been made at the same time but wasn't finished. Also the problem wasn't actually in the grinding but in the checking - the null corrector that was supposed to check the shape of the mirror was off. And the mirror is still off. The problem was fixed by fitting the telescope with corrective equipment to compensate for the error in the curvature. Essentially they gave it glasses.
The Hubble doesn't have a lens. Headlines frequently talk of objects as seen "through Hubble's lens." Like most large telescopes, there is no lens in the Hubble. It has a mirror. Lenses are only good in small telescopes; they quickly become too large to handle as the size of a telescope increases.
The Hubble doesn't go anyplace. There are misconceptions that the Hubble travels to photograph objects. Not true. It is parked in a low Earth orbit a few hundred kilometers up. It's only infinitesmally closer to distant space objects than we are here on earth. The reason the Hubble can see so well is because it doesn't have to look up through Earth's atmosphere, which is incredibly obfuscating to astronomy. Modern digital corrections for the atmospheric interference, though, may someday make space telescopes obsolete. With corrections like these, some land-based telescopes have been able to produce images that rival the Hubble's.
You have to apply for time on the Hubble. If you're an astronomer and you want to use Hubble, you have to apply for time on it, and your odds aren't good. One in six applications are rejected. You have to have a project that a) can't be done from Earth, b) doesn't duplicate something that's already been done and c) is judged to be a worthwhile use of the telescope's time. If you're approved then the real work starts. You have to submit super detailed plans of exactly where you want the telescope pointed, what you want to look at and for how long, blah blah blah. The upside is that the data you receive is yours and yours alone for a one-year proprietary period before it's made public. What's cool as well is that the Director decided awhile back that there would be a certain amount of time allotted for amateur astronomers to use Hubble. So there are some lucky high school students and astronomy hobbyists who've gotten to look at stuff with the Hubble. Nifty!
The Hubble can't be used for spying. Conspiracy theorists love to speculate about the Hubble being used to spy on Earth. But it can't. The Earth moves too fast for the Hubble's camera to resolve. Everything is a blurry streak.
The Hubble isn't the biggest telescope ever made. Not even close. It isn't actually all that big. It couldn't be too big, because it had to fit inside the space shuttle to be put in orbit. It's about the size of a bus.