Education
How they do it: Processing Hubble images from B&W into stunning full-color
Everyone has seen the dramatic images produced by the Hubble Telescope from the iconic Pillars of Creation to the hundreds of galaxies in one shot, but how are these images created? The Hubble Telescope captures images in monochrome, just like the old black and white photographs with no color, but the images we see are …
Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble
Vocabulary • Focal Length: The distance between a curved mirror and its Focal Point • Focal Point: The position where all reflected light inside the telescope focuses to a point of light • Focal Surface: The place where the Focal Point converges to • Primary Mirror: The larger of the two curved mirrors that reflect …
The Pi Day of the Century
If you like numbers, you will love March 14, 2015. When written as a numerical date, it’s 3/14/15, corresponding to the first five digits of pi (3.1415) — a once-in-a-century coincidence! Pi Day, which would have been the 136th birthday of Albert Einstein, is a great excuse to eat pie, and to appreciate how important …
Astronomical serendipity
Since 1594, when Johannes Kepler predicted that there should be a planet between Mars and Jupiter, astronomers had been searching for that “missing planet.” When Giuseppe Piazzi discovered Ceres in 1801, the scientific world thought that he had ended the search. Then Ceres disappeared from sight, only to be recovered one year later. Astronomers breathed …
Photographing the planets (part 2)
Following on from last issue where we looked at the equipment and capture of video to produce a photograph of the planets this issue looks at the processing of the video into an image. This article really only scratches the surface of image processing as there are so many variables and methodologies that can be …
National Flight Academy makes learning an adventure
Who says learning can’t be fun? Certainly not the leadership team at Ambition who delivers “inspired play” in six-day immersive programs at the National Flight Academy located in Pensacola, Florida. It all starts with the story – a heart-pumping, adrenaline-filled mission with squadrons competing to successfully finish a task. Whether it is a race or …