If you have some time to kill, but want to spend it doing something truly worthwhile, spacetelescope.org has just the thing for you. This website helps you learn about the process of piecing together images of deep space in an attempt to create a composite, colored image like this one that I made earlier:

The final, composite image of Messier 17

If you are at all interested in checking this out for yourself, here are the links that you will need:

http://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator/datasets/

http://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator/stepbystep/

The first link will take you to a page with quite a few download links. Pick one of those, download the pictures that it presents to you, and then go to the second link that I provided and follow the step-by-step instructions. One little disclaimer – in order to do this, you will need to download Photoshop if you do not already have it. However there is no need to worry, if you go to Adobe’s website you can download Photoshop for free and use its free trial for up to 30 days. You could probably complete this project in under an hour, so I would highly recommend giving it a shot.

If you do not have the time or the desire to complete the project, that is perfectly understandable. Either way, here is a little summary of what astronomers must do in order to create a detailed, accurate, and colorful photo of the reaches of the cosmos. First, when NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope snaps a picture of a distant star millions of light years away, it is not taking the same type of picture that your average iPhone camera takes. Instead of using film or digital storage to collect the light that comes to it, it uses charge-coupled devices, most of which are sensitive to infrared light, not visible light. So, when the initial images are developed, they are simple, colorless photos, like these:

The blue layer

The green layer

The red layer

These photos are images of Messier 17, a nebula that sits about 5,000 light years away from Earth. To turn these boring images into one vibrant photo, like the one shown at the beginning of this blogpost, you have to layer the photos, the first layer with the lowest wavelength (so, the bluer one) and the last layer with the highest wavelength (the redder one). After doing this and messing with the coloring a bit through the hue/saturation, curves, and levels options, the result is a beautiful representation of a distant land that we know very little about. If you have not pieced it together just yet, the mundane, colorless photos above were combined to create the lively, colorful picture at the top of this blogpost. So, that’s a little “behind the scenes,” if you will, to how people create incredible images of outer space.

Messier 17, also known as the Omega Nebula, is a very interesting location in and of itself. It is a part of the Sagittarius constellation, and has a mass that equals about 800 solar masses. Its size is not just for show – it is known as one of the most luminous and star-producing regions in the entire Milky Way. It does not only stand out in this category; M17 is also one of the youngest known clusters with an age of just 1,000,000 years. Probably the coolest thing about this nebula is how many aliases it has. Some of these include the Swan Nebula, the Checkmark Nebula, the Lobster Nebula and the Horseshoe Nebula. The Nebula has so many names because of how varied it is. There is no single defining characteristic for the region, and instead many different parts of it resemble something we are familiar with (like a swan or a horseshoe).

I had the chance to watch Ridley Scott’s classic film, Alien, tonight. This is not the first time I have had the pleasure of watching this movie, but it never fails to put me on the edge of my seat. Each time I watch Ripley creep carefully around the lower levels of the ship searching for her escape pod, forcing herself to ignore the warnings in the background shouting, “T-Minus 60 seconds until ship self-destructs,” it’s almost like I can feel the shear dread that she is experiencing. That’s how well Ridley Scott did on this movie, and it is likely one of the reasons why this movie won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1979.

The alien in the movie is extremely eerie looking, but it really does not look like what we consider an “archetypal alien.” Source: http://khpbooks.com/cinemaknifefight/tag/the-thing/

Anyways, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, I am going to continue to do my best to convince you to watch it. The film starts out with the crew of the towing spaceship Nostromo on their way back to Earth, carrying loads of mineral ore that had been gathered in a distant corner of space. The crew is awakened from their stasis by SOS signals coming from a spaceship on a nearby planet. When they go to explore and potentially give aid to the source of these signals, the crew encounters something slightly unexpected (I don’t want to ruin it for you) that completely alters the nature of their voyage.

For me, the most captivating aspect of the film has to be its uncanny ability to bring some legitimacy to what it must feel like to encounter intelligent, extraterrestrial beings. Humans are naturally terrified of the unknown, and that is precisely the reason so many people oppose astronomy and its goals. These people simply believe that we are not doing ourselves any favors by sticking our head out there for the cosmos to see. There is no doubt that if we ever do have the fortune (although many people might not call it a fortune) of encountering aliens, there is absolutely a chance of them being hostile. This is a pretty terrifying thought, and must be multitudes more terrifying when it is brought to life in front of you, as it is in Alien. Combining the excellent performances of the actors with an incredible script and director, Alien turned out to be a pretty awesome movie. Taking all this into mind, now consider that this movie was created in 1979, about 34 years ago. Clearly the technology that the filmmakers had available to them then was not anything like it is now, and yet they still managed to make a phenomenal film. Seriously, go see this movie!

If I somehow still haven’t convinced you that you should take a few hours out of your day to watch Alien, then don’t take it from me… Take it from the real critics – Alien has an 8.5 rating on IMDB, making it the 40th greatest movie of all time. Moreover, 97% of people who reviewed the movie on Rotten Tomatoes said it was “fresh.” The bottom line is, most people, myself included, agree that Alien is a classic movie that is a must-see for all sci-fi fans.

The question of why science is so essential in our times is sometimes a tricky one. While science does bring around endless new discoveries and innovation for the greater good, it does have certain downfalls, like the pollution that now surrounds the earth as a result of technological innovations. Although science does sometimes pose problems, it is also the only means through which we can find a solution for these problems. At the end of the day, science does far more good than it does bad, and without science, civilization as we know it would not exist.

It is for that reason that it always shocks me to hear of people doubting ingenious, thorough, and nearly irrefutable theories like Darwin’s theory of Evolution, for what are almost always unfounded reasons. Generally, these reasons have something to do with religion, which makes sense. If someone is raised up to believe that just above the clouds lies the beautiful, eternal land of Heaven, then when men step foot on the moon and return claiming that they saw no trace of anything resembling Heaven, that person may be quick to deny the findings. It is uncomfortable for people to find out that what they have believed all their life is false, so when science makes a claim that may conflict with one of their beliefs, it is no surprise that some enemies are made. If people simply realized that science really and truly is only doing its best to describe phenomenon of the natural world and to better that world, then maybe they wouldn’t have so many problems with some of the claims that scientific studies make.

While evolution is a theory, the people protesting against it generally do not fully understand what is meant by “theory.” Source: http://pazymino1evolutionliteracy.blogs.umassd.edu/2011/01/10/evolution-cartoons/

All of this becomes a real issue to consider when states like Texas try to make teachers add intelligent design to the curriculum of their science classes in place of the theory of evolution. Perhaps it is fair to say that parents should be able to decide what information their children are exposed to, but does that imply that it is okay for masses of children to be miseducated, and taught subjects that we know to be false? Problems like these arise when people fundamentally disagree on something. It is not an issue of there being a lack of information supporting the claim. Instead, people are choosing to deny facts, because accepting them, and the fact that they may have been wrong about a few things, is simply too hard for some.

If this general disregard of science continues, issues like globing warming and limited water are going to be become real, palpable problems in society. Unfortunately, it may take a true tragedy to show people that these concerns absolutely cannot be ignored any longer. I’m confident that at some point soon, people all around the world will fully understand and embrace the importance of science, because society would be empty without it.

Hello everyone, my name is Will Hollo, and I am pleased to announce that this is the beginning of a wonderful, informative blog that will hopefully teach you a myriad of new things about the jaw-dropping study of the universe around us – astronomy. Although I am no expert on the subject, I hope that by the end of this two-block course, this blog will have taught you some things that you never knew before. During my senior year of high-school, I took a semester long course on astronomy, and in that time I became intrigued with the subject and learned as many things about it as I could.

I am currently undeclared as I really don’t have a great idea of what I want to major in, but I would say it’s likely that I go down some science path, and that very well may include astronomy in some way. Luckily, I have more than enough time to pick what I will major in, so that’s not something I’m too worried about.

Anyways, I am originally from Houston, Texas, so going to school in Colorado is a welcome experience to me. Don’t get me wrong, I love H-town, but I’m ecstatic to see what Colorado has to offer me. Skiing, hiking, rockclimbing, fishing, the cold weather – the list goes on. But let’s just say I am more than ready to call myself a Coloradan. Nothing excites me more than knowing that when I graduate from Colorado College, I will have unlimited options. If I really wanted to, I could jump into my career (whatever that might end up being) right away, but I don’t think I want to do that. I think that when I finish school, I want to see the world and check out absolutely all of my options before I commit myself to my job. However, I need to actually get to that point in my life before I start thinking about it too much.

I hope that this FYE will do a couple of things for me. For one, I want it to help acclimate me to CC’s block plan. It is going to take some getting used to, but once I learn the ins and outs of the block plan I’m sure it’s going to be great for me. Secondly, I want to develop my study habits early on. I want nothing more than to exceed academically at this school, and the only way I can do that is if I work hard from the beginning. Lastly, I want to come out of this class with an exceptional understanding of whatever topics we study. I don’t want to just memorize facts from a page, I want to truly understand what we are studying so I won’t just forget everything the week after the exam.

One topic in astronomy that has always fascinated me is that when you look at stars in the night sky, the light that are you seeing from those stars is actually coming from millions of years ago. It has taken many, many years for the photons of light to physically travel from where they started (the stars) to where they are going (the earth). So many years, in fact, that when we look up during a beautiful star-filled night, we are seeing stars how they were when the universe was in its infancy. A truly star-filled night is somewhat like a time machine – we just look up and somehow we are also looking back in time. Stars are so far away and yet somehow large enough for us to be able see. As a result, they manage to be absolutely perfect models of the concept of the speed of light. How Einstein proved his theory of relativity and how that ties into this discussion is another thing I’m immensely amazed by, but that’s for another time.

Here’s a pretty cool video that some of you guys may like if you do enjoy astronomy. Many of you may have already watched it before, it’s the first episode of the Sagan Series.

Thanks for reading