this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024
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Space

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The Busy Center of the Lagoon Nebula


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[โ€“] PP_BOY_ 30 points 3 months ago (1 children)

When I was a young man, I became deeply fascinated with black holes. I'd lie in my bed at night and try to imagine what it would feel like to enter one.

[โ€“] Comptero 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 43 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Do you normally let other people use your mind to imagine things?

[โ€“] PlasticExistence 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but they always leave it a mess

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What do you charge per hour of brain use?

[โ€“] madcaesar 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[โ€“] YoorWeb 2 points 2 months ago

Do you accept schmeckles?

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

That's called politics.

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (2 children)

why dont we see a band that goes across the center like in the visualization below?

[โ€“] peopleproblems 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Because we're basically looking at it from the "top" of the accretion disk. That's not exactly correct, but the way light and gravity mix the image isn't perfectly uniform.

The brightest edge of the picture is the matter heading toward us, where as the darker edge it's heading away.

The image you shared has a bit of artistic touch. It's hard to visualize how a disk of matter spinning in one plane can emit light in the massively warped space around a black hole.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Because we're basically looking at it from the "top" of the accretion disk.

I'm not sure which way M87 points, but for Saggitarius A*, shouldn't we be seeing it pretty much edge on? Our solar system is in the plane of the Milky Way.

[โ€“] Telodzrum 6 points 2 months ago

The Solar System sits about 20.5 parsecs above the galactic plane, so not really edge on.

[โ€“] Khanzarate 4 points 2 months ago

Possible we're looking at the top and the band is a disk around it. Dunno for sure.

[โ€“] _lilith 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I thought the thumbnail was nsfw blurred and I clicked it to see space lewds

[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

the cosmic goatse

[โ€“] Linkerbaan 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's a new color every time

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

it's a false color image

it's too tiny to take a picture of using a traditional telescope, so instead, they use multiple telescopes around the Earth, and piecemeal that data together. Which means they have to reconstruct the missing details (it's not made up, it's more like playing "connect the dots" with tons of math)

the final image is a composite of 3 different grayscale images, taken at different wavelengths of light.

The resulting black and white images are given different colors, then blended together (which is pretty similar to how cameras take images, they just map the grayscale images to colors we can see with our eyes)

[โ€“] VelvetStorm 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But that is a simulated image

[โ€“] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I hate to break it to you, but every photograph you've ever seen is a simulated image.

[โ€“] jas0n 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Here's a picture of me when I was older.