Astronomy Provides Some Excellent Science and Wall Art

Many of the images from the Hubble Telescope have black squares grouped in a corner.  This would never be done by an artist, but NASA is not into art.  If there is artistic value in an image that is fine, but NASA does not care about your walls.  The art use is incidental.

So, what causes these blacked out regions on many of the images?  The Hubble Telescope is a valuable piece of research equipment, and there is a long waiting list for its use.  When a group of scientists get to the front of the line they must operate as efficiently as possible.  Often there is a region that is of no interest, so as the telescope takes its array of images that will be placed together to make a large image, uninteresting areas must be skipped so the telescope can be aimed at a new target.  As strange as this is I have noticed many images that are for sale do so with the black corner regions, and they still have an appealing look.

Some of the most interesting images are those of condensing clouds of gas in regions of new stat birth, and the beauty of an exploding star making a nebulous.   Nebulae are some of the most attractive images the Hubble produces.  Then, if a large star blows up into a supernova the image may show beams of particles streaming away, or rings of matter moving out from the area of the explosion.  And, never underestimate the beauty of the galaxies.  Galaxies take on many shapes, and some of the most spectacular are of those galaxies that have been rammed by other galaxies.   A collision gravitationally draws the stars into some exotic arrangements, and rips gas from stars to allow for new stars to be born.  And, real deep space shots can show galactic clusters or gravitational lensing.

Some shots are of the planets in our own solar system.  Seeing an image of the auroras from space as they form on Jupiter or Saturn makes an image worthy of wall space.  Or, if you prefer the rings of Saturn are incredible on a print.

If you looked into your telescope you could not see the detail the Hubble reveals, but even of you could things would often look vastly different.  Scientists often need to see an image of what invisible frequencies like ultraviolet light are like.  The trick is to have the computer change colors, making ultraviolet a color we can see.  So, all of those colors might be different if you were to view the object, and some of the features that make your print so beautiful might not be there at all.  They are the result of color mapping by the computer.

A book on Hubble images is an excellent coffee table book.  A visitor can pick it up and simply flip the pages for amazing images.

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