The sights and sounds of space

Alan Boyle — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:27:16 GMT

Last month, The Boston Globe began a feature called "The Big Picture" - and some of its subjects have featured the glories of space. Here are some of the Big Pictures:

"Cassini Nears Four-Year Mark" (congrats to the Cassini team on the end of their primary mission and the beginning of the extended mission, by the way)

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/
2008/05/cassini_nears_fouryear_mark.html

"The Sky, From Above"
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/
2008/06/the_sky_from_above.html

"Martian Skies"
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/06/martian_skies.html

And if we're talking about big pictures on Earth, you shouldn't miss out on msnbc.com's popular offerings:

PhotoBlog
http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/

The Week in Pictures
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3842331/

The sights and sounds of space

Tim Rommes, Washington, UT — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:51:36 GMT

So what do we wind up with? A pulsar keeping time - must be the drummer, a black hole laying down a killer bass line, the aurora as brass, Jupiter and Saturn on strings? Kind of a jazzy little ensemble. I'll bet they over use syncopation.

The sights and sounds of space

Phil Piper, Dasol, Pang., Philippines — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:29:29 GMT

Sights and sounds of space? I was taught in 6th grade elementary school in the USA, 56 years ago, that sound waves don't travel through the vacuum of space. Has something changed?

The sights and sounds of space

Thomas Ashby, Calgary — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:23:10 GMT

That galaxy appeares to be in our line of sight and tilted at 90 degrees. I wonder why we see no gravitational lensing. It seems to me there should be
with such a large gravitational structure.

The sights and sounds of space

Tim Rommes, Washington, UT — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 05:13:54 GMT

Phil,

Did they teach you how a film projector worked? In the earliest days of movies, silent pictures, there was no sound track, music was played in the theater that matched and interpereted the action on screen. That left a lot of control out of the hands of Hollywood. Several attempts were made to add a soundtrack to the film. The one that finally struck used a strip on the side of the film, next to the picture part. By varying the amount of light going through this strip they were able to use a detector hooked up to an amplifier hooked up to speakers and soon the "talkies" were born. If you can follow that I assume you can see how we can take any varying signal and convert it to a sound signal. Visual light, x-rays, radio frequency emissions,gamma radiation, gravity pulses, subspace interference, ...

The sights and sounds of space

Jay, Lemoore, Ca. — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 07:25:52 GMT

Thanks for that explanation, Tim. I was wondering along the same lines as Phil.

The sights and sounds of space

Tim Rommes, Washington, UT — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:24:26 GMT

Any idea why the arms have those big holes in them? Is that from huge super novae? I haven't seen this look before. Do all galaxies look like this with the right color enchancements?

The sights and sounds of space

Tim Rommes, Washington, UT — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:40:01 GMT

Thomas Ashby,

Lensing like that requires pretty exacting alignment and objects that are bright enough. There might be a ring there that's just so dim we can't see it, it might be coming through in the arms. I'm not sure of the relative distances involved and the system may work like a more conventional lens, we may not be at the focal point. That being the case then for any large mass out there we get a ring that shows us what is at a specific distance behind the mass. In most cases we'd be focused on nothing, and we might not even notice that ring.

The sights and sounds of space

Thomas Ashby, Calgary — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:24:32 GMT

Ok Tim..that makes sense. Of course, not even at a focal point. So it's just luck that we get to see any lensing systems at all as from the Virgo cluster for instance.

The sights and sounds of space

Tim Rommes, Washington, UT — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:05:30 GMT

After a little more thought ... If the gravitaional pull of a galaxy is able to bend the path of light, let's say 2 degrees from it's original path, and at it's distance the light from another galaxy is diverging at 3 degrees, 1.5 + 1.5, to pass the lensing galaxy on either side, or rather all around then:
All of the light that would have passed the galaxy at this given distance, per the 4 degree spread, would be bent 2 degrees such that the light would be converging again at a 1/2 degree angle. It would come to a focus at 3 times the distance between the two galaxies. I think that's where we'd see the best Einstein ring. If it were farther out, such that it's dispersion angle were 2 degrees, 1 + 1 off straight line, then the point at which it came back to focus would be equal to the distance between the galaxies. So every light source probably casts an Einstein ring around every gravity concentration which is visible as long as you are in the right line. The quality of the ring probaly depends on what angle of dispersion focuses where you are. In the first example, if we were closer than 3 times the distance, say 2 times the distance, then light from a tighter cone should focus where we are. This would work until the cone were so small it no longer opened wider than the structure producing the gravity. Conversely, a light source too close to the gravity would have to cast a more obtuse cone to get around and a two degree change from an 80 degree angle would not converge. My "2 degree" angle of change would vary with the point of closest approach to the lens. That would give a sweet spot for Einstein rings. The Goldilocks distance. I've heard that term before about planetary distance from a star for life, I don't know if I've heard it about this.

But still, with all the stuff out beyond what we can see you'd expect more rings. It's like looking at the beach and wondering how many grains of sand line up perfectly with your eye. Maybe they're just too faint.