Pictures On Cage Match



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I've heard questions from friends and users of our blog, like "what does "↔" mean, and why won't pictures enlarge very much?

Any time you see "↔" underneath a picture, click the picture to enlarge.

If you're running Firefox and the picture still will not fit in the browser window, you'll see a magnifying glass cursor when the cursor is moved over the picture.  Click on the area of the picture you'd like to enlarge and you'll see the highest resolution.  Click again to return, then magnify a different area.

Apologies if most of you already know this, but I thought I'd include it for those that don't.

Enjoy the picture of the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51, courtesy NASA / Hubble.

From Hubble's site:

The processing has further sharpened details and enhanced color and contrast in otherwise faint areas, bringing out dust lanes and extended streams that cross the small companion, along with features in the surroundings and core of M51 itself. The pair are about 31 million light-years distant.

Not much processing from the original, which I can't find now, darnit.  The original was almost this good -- only the faint details have been enhanced.

The galaxy is an amazing sight in a medium aperture scope, 24" to 36".  Although visually it's in black and white, much detail can be discerned with the Mark I Mod 0 eyeball.  Add a CCD camera, and an amateur can take photos almost this good.

Here is a superb example of amateur astrophotography  Courtesy Robert Gendler.


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Thirty years ago I could see the Veil Nebula with binoculars.  DFW has totally blown the skies into a gray morass of light pollution.  Now I must drive or fly to observatories to do any work at all.

I can still see all Messier objects and many NGC objects from the back yard with a 24" scope, but now I must use what's called an "LPR" -- a light pollution rejection filter.  There are several, depending on which tiny bandwidth you'd like to observe.

That darned sodium vapor lighting (you've seen it, it's orange) is tough to filter.

Why are all the parking lot and street lamps beaming up into the night sky when reflector shielding is cheap?  Here's one of our articles showing nighttime light pollution.

Geez, can you pick out London, Paris, Rome, Bonn, Moscow, etc.?

Another time saver on Cage Match -- to see the beginning of any topic, click on some "white space" in a post and press the "Home" key.  You can start from the top easily and scroll down.

That's too bad because they take your breath away, while giving you perspective on everyday life - and death.

The Whirlpool Galaxy, M51, looks almost organic.

Organic?  Maybe it has a sun with a planet like Earth and some intelligent life.  It's only 7.1 +/- 1.2 Mpc (23.1 million light years) from our corner of the universe.

There's one galaxy, M31 in Andromeda that's visible with the Mark I Mod 0 eyeball under dark skies.  It's the most distant object visible to the unaided eye, at 2.1 million light years.

Pack a lunch, we leave tomorrow.