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Forty hours for a picture of some stars? It better be good

And it is.

The Chandra Deep Field South, observed in the U-, B-, and R-bands with ESO’s VIMOS and WFI instruments. The U-band VIMOS observations were made over a period of 40 hours and constitute the deepest image ever taken from the ground in the U-band. The image covers a region of 14.1 x 21.6 arcmin on the sky and shows galaxies that are 1 billion times fainter than can be seen by the unaided eye. The VIMOS R-band image was assembled by the ESO/GOODS team from archival data, while the WFI B-band image was produced by the GABODS team.

Click the image to head over to the ESO site, and download the full size image in JPEG or TIFF format. Tasty.

Some day, man will go to the stars…

…But until then, we still have such wonderful products of mankind as the Hubble Space Telescope, which produced this remarkable image (HubbleSite link) a while ago, and was released by the Hubble Heritage Project earlier this month:

This month’s three-dimensional-looking Hubble image shows the edge of the giant gaseous cavity within the star-forming region called NGC 3324. The glowing nebula has been carved out by intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from several hot, young stars. A cluster of extremely massive stars, located well outside this image in the center of the nebula, is responsible for the ionization of the nebula and excavation of the cavity.

The image also reveals dramatic dark towers of cool gas and dust that rise above the glowing wall of gas. The dense gas at the top resists the blistering ultraviolet radiation from the central stars, and creates a tower that points in the direction of the energy flow. The high-energy radiation blazing out from the hot young stars in NGC 3324 is sculpting the wall of the nebula by slowly eroding it away.

Located in the southern hemisphere, NGC 3324 is at the northwest corner of the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372), home of the Keyhole Nebula and the active, outbursting star Eta Carinae. The entire Carina Nebula Complex is located at a distance of roughly 7,200 light-years, and lies in the constellation Carina.

Courtesy of the STSI Hubble Heritage Project, ten years old this October; for the full description and image credit read the main caption article.

Quite something, isn’t it. Other resolution options and formats are available on the Hubble Site, including an absolutely-massive-good-for-A0-print version.

Courtesy of UniverseToday’s article on another image of NGC 3324, taken by Brad Moore: Current estimates place the number of stars in the Universe at 70 sextillion (70,000 million million million), based on a 2003 survey completed by Australian astronomers. That’s ten times the number of sand grains on all the Earth’s beaches and deserts combined and certainly more than enough to fill the entire sky with starlight!

So, what are you waiting for? Go look at some more marvellous Hubble photography, and when you look at the night sky and curse the atmosphere for clouding an otherwise fantastic view, thank the Hubble Space Telescope, silently crossing the skies above us as it has been since 1990, for documenting the deepest reaches of the known Universe in detail we could have never even imagined before then. You may also want to check out HubbleSite’s Tonight’s Sky featurette, showing you what to look for in this month’s night skies with a little explanation behind each featured constellation.

And also, don’t forget that Hubble is due for decommissioning by 2013, by which time the James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to be up in space and fully operational. (As a result, Hubble’s orbit will be allowed to decay until it falls back into our atmosphere and burns up, just as Mir did.)

Buddy, could you spare a digit?

How does an estimated $11trillion of national debt sound to you? We’re reaching Iceland levels of impropriety here.

BBC News reports,

The US government’s debts have ballooned so badly the National Debt Clock in New York has run out of digits to record the spiralling figure. The digital counter marks the national debt level, but when that passed the $10 trillion point last month, the sign could not display the full amount.

…The clock’s owners say two more zeros will be added, allowing the clock to record a quadrillion dollars of debt.

Click here for the full article.

The Fairlight CMI, the neglected pioneer of electronic music

In 1975, I had just finished highschool and was looking for something to do. My school-friend, Kim Ryrie, played me a record called “Switched on Bach” which was recorded entirely using the Moog synthesiser. I thought this was really cool - electronic music obviously had great potential.

The record sleeve had a photo of the Moog synthesiser; rack after rack of electronic modules with hundreds of patchleads and knobs that all has to be set just right to make it happen.

Kim was very keen to develop a better synthesiser, and knowing my interest in electronics, he suggested we join forces. I had long been interested in computers - I built my first computer when I was about 12 - and it was obvious to me that combining digital technology with music synthesis was the way to go. A year or so later, we met Tony Furse, an engineer who was also working on digital music synthesis. Tony introduced us to these new-fangled things called microprocessors (the personal computer was still a decade away).

After four years of working around the clock, we had the first working prototype of what was to revolutionise the music industry. Priced at between $50,000 and $100,000 each, over 300 “Fairlights” were sold world-wide.

From Peter Vogel’s Fairlight site

On his web site, you can listen to the majority of the audio Vogel accumulated during his tenure with Fairlight. It makes for a fascinating listen. In particular, check out “Reelin’ in the Fairlight” (parts 1 and 2) at the bottom of the audio archive page - with examples of songs the Fairlight has been used in over the past forty years, it makes for a fascinating listen.

Peter Vogel’s Fairlight Audio Archives: http://anerd.com/fairlight/audioarchives/index.htm

Also, you’d be amazed how hard people work to create such small (but perfectly formed) creations… In 2005, MusicThing ran a series of articles called “The Tiny Music Makers”, documenting a handful of some of the most notable examples: http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/05/all-this-week-tiny-music-makers.html. Enjoy.

Word of the Day: Affluenza

Affluenza is a term used by critics of consumerism, a portmanteau of affluence and influenza. Sources define this term as follows:

affluenza, n. a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.by alex (de Graaf ^[1])

affluenza, n. 1. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by the pursuit of the American Dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth. (PBS [1])

Proponents of the term consider the costs of prizing material wealth vastly outweigh the benefits. They claim those who become wealthy will find the economic success leaving them unfulfilled and hungry for more wealth. The condition is considered particularly acute amongst those with inherited wealth, who are often said to experience guilt, lack of purpose and dissolute behavior, as well as obsession with holding on to the wealth (John Levy’s Coping with Inherited Wealth - see [2]).

Critics of the term suggest that the term is a ghastly neologism, which relies upon a viral metaphor to describe an ill-defined social anxiety.

Thanks, Wikipedia

LHC? Nah, I’ll take the LHD.

The Large Hadron Collidor is soooo last week.
Say hello to my little friend, the Large Helical Device: Further reading: Large Hadron Collider Large Helical Device

And just to complement, because it is stunningly beautiful, here’s part of the LHC:
Again, courtesy of Gizmodo.

Fine, Finer, Finest

Jem Finer is one of the most bizarre, unorthodox yet strangely compelling artists I’ve come across in the past decade. He loves to create, and create differently.

What he produces is art which often hasmore than one immediate purpose - half the fun is working out exactly what it means, aside from the obvious immediate impact or message… and after you leave wherever the artwork may be on display (be it its actual location or, in some cases, the online site) you’ll usually find yourself thinking about it long after you’ve gone off and started to do something else.

I won’t spoil the fun, but I strongly suggest you go exploring (in no particular order):

CosmoLog, the blog of The Centre Of The Universe
On Earth As In Heaven
LongPlayer
Score For A Hole In The Ground
Zero Genie, a partial list of collaborations, and
AutoDestruct, “A Document of Autodestruct Performances Nos. 1, 2 and 3”, mysteriously coming soon.

There’s more out there, but that’s up to you to find. Happy timeout.

We Are All The Same, some of the time

Thought-provoking interactive art from Tim Wainwright, and if, like me, you know someone who has suffered with cancer (or you have suffered yourself) this will definitely make you stop and think for a moment.

View the presentation with your browser (and Flash) at http://www.timwainwright.com/cancer/flash.html.