Chances are you have seen at least one deep space image from the Hubble Telescope.  This pictures are amazing to be sure, but these amazing photos are actually made quite easily using Photoshop, a custom program called FITS Liberator, and three different grayscale images.  The official instructions from the Hubble website are available here, but I will briefly explain them to you.

The three grayscale images are all identical photos except that the wavelength of each photo varies.  Below are the three photos of the “Pillars of Creation”, part of the Eagle Nebula, that I used:

After converting the files using FITS Liberator, the photos are then imported into Photoshop and manually all inserted into the same file, each as a separate layer.  After sorting the files by wavelength, highest to lowest (top-down), each layer received a “color action”, with the first being red, the second green, and the third blue.  These can be applied manually, but I downloaded a pre-made one here.  After manually adjusting the default settings for each action, the combined (not merged) photo now looks like photos you have probably seen.

The Pillars of Creation photo I was able to create in Photoshop:

The Photo NASA created:

The Pillars of Creation are just a small segment of a giant stellar cloud, or nebula, called the Eagle Nebula.  The Nebula is located close to 7,000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Serpens.  This is an actual star forming nebula, unlike the Crab Nebula, where the term nebula is actually misused.  The Eagle Nebula actually contains known active star-forming regions, including the Pillars of Creation.

Here is a photo of the Pillars of Creation overlayed on the whole nebula, with other notable landmarks overlayed as well.

JJ Abram’s 2009 reboot of the beloved Star Trek franchise has been one of my favorite movies for some time now, and I am not alone in this. Critics and fans agree that this film is not only a great Star Trek film, but a great summer blockbuster, period. For those of you who haven’t seen it, here’s a (detailed) synopsis. Spoiler Alert!

The Stardate is 2233.04 and the Federation vessel USS Kelvin is surprised to find an enormous future Romulan ship, the Narada, emerging from a black hole. The Kelvin’s captain is murdered by the Romulan Captain Nero (Eric Bana), and his ship is destroyed by the Narada. 800 crew members manage to escape including Winona Kirk (Jennifer Morrison) and the newly-born James T. Kirk (Chris Pine). George Kirk, however, sacrifices himself to save the crew members.

Fast forward to Stardate 2250, and the adolescent Jim Kirk meets Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood). After a brief conversation, Pike convinces Kirk to join Starfleet. On board the shuttle to the orbiting Starfleet station, Kirk meets a distressed Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban). Three years pass when Earth receives a distress signal from Vulcan, and all cadets are assigned to their respective ships. Kirk, after being “grounded” from accusations of cheating by Commander Spock (Zachary Quinto), is brought aboard by McCoy. Hikaru Sulu (John Cho), Ahura (Zoe Saldana), and the Enterprise arrive at Vulcan after the rest of the fleet, which as been destroyed single-handedly by Nero.

After realizing the connection between Vulcan and the Kelvin incident, Kirk rushes to the bridge and attemps to prevent the Enterprise from meeting the same fate.  The Enterprise arrives at Vulcan, and Captain Pike is taken hostage by Nero, who is lowering a drill into the atmosphere to create a tunnel to the planet’s core.  Kirk and Sulu destroy the drill, but not before Nero can launch a black hole device into the center of the planet.  Krik and Sulu are brought back to the Enterprise along with most of the Vulcan High Council, including Spock’s father.  After attempting to attack Spock, Kirk is sent to Delta Vega, where he meets future Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg).  Kirk and Scott “beam” back to the Enterprise, where Kirk once again confronts Spock on the bridge.  After attacking Kirk, Spock relinquishes command of the ship to Kirk, who was promoted to First Officer by Pike.

The Enterprise, now under Kirk’s command, returns to Earth to confront Nero and the Narada.  Spock and Kirk beam aboard the Narada and fight their way to future Spock’s captured Vulcan ship.  Spock leaves in the ship while Kirk searches for Captain Pike.  Once outside the Narada, Spock taunts Nero into leaving Earth, where he is ambushed by the Enterprise.  The Vulcan ship, which contains the Red Matter, is driven into the Narada after Spock, Kirk, and Pike are all brought back to the Enterprise.  The Narada falls to the ensuing black hole.  The Enterprise barely escapes the black hole and returns to Earth, where a recuperating Captain Pike officially hands the Enterprise over to Kirk.  Future Spock watches from the balcony above.  The film ends with the classic Star Trek closer: “Space, the final frontier…”.

Many of the film’s science technology is straight from science fiction, but many of the technologies are hypothesized.  Early in the film, the Narada emerges from the future through a wormhole.  The Enterprise and other Federation ships are also capable of multiple factors of Warp speed, resulting in faster-than-light travel.  From a purely acceleration based perspective, achieving FTL speeds in impossible due to electromagnetic fields breaking down.  However, it is possible that the Enterprise runs on technology similar to the hypothesized warp drive that NASA is currently speculating.  The technology bears similar resemblance to that of Star Wars.  Both have futuristic laser-based weaponry, FTL travel speeds, and a myriad of different alien species (all of whom conveniently speak English.

This movie didn’t address any pressing social issues when it was released in 2009, but there is a notable amount of discrimination in the movie between races.  Aliens in the Star Trek universe are, for the most part, depicted as highly intelligent, highly advanced civilizations most capable of speaking fluent English, and capable of FTL travel speeds.  Spock experiences a significant amount of racism (if you can even call it that) due to his mixed heritage of both Human and Vulcan species.  McCoy calls him a “pointy-eared bastard” on multiple occasions and the entire Vulcan planet is destroyed by Nero, who showed no remorse for his mass genocide.

Granted, this article is from 2003, but it still baffles me.  Human civilization is the way it is because of science.  Light bulbs were created using chemistry.  Buildings can stand tall because of engineering.  Humans have a 30-year-longer life-expectancy because of medical advancements using scientifically created drugs, yet some people have the audacity to question the ongoing relevancy science?

I know it’s no secret that science has been following out of favor in terms of the allocation of government funding, but that’s necessarily a bad thing.  To use NASA as an example, their funding has been cut down to $50 million a year, a mere fraction of the budget the administration received in its heyday during the 1960s and 70s.  In speaking with senior NASA engineer Tim Van Sant this past spring, he admitted to me that NASA’s progress with new and existing projects is only slowing.  He also told me that private corporations like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic have made significant headway towards goals that NASA has been working towards in half the time.  Even many scientific advancements of old were made without government funding.  Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone or the Wright brothers’ airplane are the building blocks for commodities that we take for granted today.  Scientific breakthroughs have been continuously enhancing the quality of our lives for centuries, yet Creationism and Intelligent Design are on the rise once again.  I’d like to see the supporters of these go one week without their car or precious smartphones.  So why don’t the public want the government working to enhance their lives even more?

The problem is that the general, uneducated (I use that word very loosely) public are frankly afraid of science.  As in most situations, the public views the bad outweighing the good.  As far as they are concerned, cell phones and television may as well be a gift from the heavens since at the moment global warming and animal testing among others are the byproducts of scientific research.  I won’t deny that these problems exist, and these problems will be fixed, but with science.  In many people, myself included, religion and similar beliefs (*cough* astrology *cough*) is being forced out and replaced with science.  It frightens the public.  They are stuck in this middle-ground between choosing to believe what they were raised to, or believing what science is telling them to.  As a response, they go with their gut.  They want the science, but they want it done behind the scenes with private corporations.  After all, what’s out of sight is out of mind.

The private industry is the future of scientific research, which in my opinion is by far the best way to go.  The important research will be conducted by companies who are more financially stable than the government, have better researchers than the government, and who don’t have the enormous liability of the government.  Whether or not the public will come to accept this truth remains to be seen, but regardless, they will have to deal with it.

Hello!  My name is Jarrett Kong, yes that’s actually correct.  I am an 18 year-old Chicago-born of Chinese and European descent, hence the Kong last name, though you wouldn’t know looking at me unless I told you.  I grew up in Southern California in a medium size city called Ventura, about an hour north of Los Angeles.  I’m an avid tennis player and won a few tournaments before I left for high school.  Unlike most kids I knew, I attended a private boarding school in Ojai, California called Thacher, where I spent my senior year researching and studying all types of astronomy and space related sciences, eventually focusing on modes and methods on space travel.

Space Shuttle Endeavor flying over my hometown.

From then on, my interest in void we call space has only deepened, and I spent many an hour this summer reading encyclopedias, books, and web pages to enhance my understanding.  Using our own personal telescope, I could observe the moon from my house, and attended a public gathering to look through the telescope of a NASA certified researcher.  Ever since, I’ve desired to major in a subject that would allow me to work in that field, either on the business end or research end, so long as its space related. Therefore, my potential majors are astrophysics for the research side, or economics for the business side.

I chose Life in the Universe as my top choice FYE because I am convinced that this class will help me determine if I really want to work within space and astronomy, or deter me from them all together.  Even if I decide that working in the field of astronomy and space isn’t for me, I know there is no way I will find this class a drag.

Many consider space and astronomy to be the least understood aspect of the our lives.  That being said, I find the deep space elements to be the most intriguing and fascinating, because they are unknown.  Pulsars and quasars, binary-star systems, black holes, and nebulas are perfect examples.  They are some of the most awe-inspriing of the great mystery that is the universe.  It’s truly amazing that these actually exist, as they seem to come straight from a Jules Verne sci-fi novel.  The universe is a subject with endless questions, each with answers waiting to be discovered by scientists.  That scientist might just be me someday.  That’s part of what makes it exciting.

Horsehead Nebula

Images:

http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/690557main_SCA_Endeavour_over_Ventura.jpg

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/52238main_MM_image_feature_89_jw4.jpg