.Window on the Universe
Spread across 128 monitors at NASA's Advanced Supercomputing facility in California, colorized red and green nebulae span a vast region of our galaxy. Called hyperwall-2, the system helps researchers visualize huge amounts of data from the latest telescopes.
National Geographic
posted by madtom at 11:27 PM
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The Subaru telescope's instruments are housed in alcoves like jeroboams of champagne in a heavenly wine cellar. (The comparison is not entirely fanciful; one leading Japanese astronomer propitiates the gods at the start of each Subaru observing run by pouring vintage sake on the ground outside the dome at the four points of the compass.) When a particular instrument is required, a robotic yellow trolley makes its way to the alcove, picks up the detector, ferries it to the bottom of the massive telescope, and locks it in place, attaching the data cables and the plumbing for the detector's refrigeration system. Subaru happens to be one of the few giant telescopes that anybody has ever actually looked through. For its inauguration in 1999, an eyepiece was attached so that Princess Sayako of Japan could have a look through the scope, and for several nights thereafter eager Subaru staffers did the same. "Everything you can see in the Hubble Space Telescope photos—the colors, the knots in the clouds—I could see with my own eyes, in stunning Technicolor," one recalled.
Will it ever reveal intelligent life in the universe? I've given up on finding it here.
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