Shadow
07-14-2012, 09:39 AM
The pawprint of a cosmic cat comes into sharper focus in this week's featured picture from the European Southern Observatory. This image of the Cat's Paw Nebula, released on Monday, combines data (http://www.debatepolicy.com/#) from the 2.2-meter MPG/ESO telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile with 60 hours of exposures from a 400mm telescope manned by expert amateur astronomers Robert Gendler (http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/) and Ryan M. Hannahoe (http://ryanhannahoe.nmskies.com/).
ESO says the additional color information from the amateurs brings out the faint blue nebulosity at the center of the "paw," while the ESO imagery fleshes the picture out with more detail. "The result is an image that is much more than the sum of its parts," the ESO team says in an image advisory (http://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1228a/). The nebula lies in the constellation Scorpius, 5,500 light-years from Earth. The Cat's Paw is considered one of the most active star formation regions in our galaxy. Let's just hope some astronomical image enhancement engineer doesn't try to airbrush out the cat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P-yAkBbIV0).
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/13/12730905-revisiting-a-cosmic-cats-paw?lite
ESO says the additional color information from the amateurs brings out the faint blue nebulosity at the center of the "paw," while the ESO imagery fleshes the picture out with more detail. "The result is an image that is much more than the sum of its parts," the ESO team says in an image advisory (http://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1228a/). The nebula lies in the constellation Scorpius, 5,500 light-years from Earth. The Cat's Paw is considered one of the most active star formation regions in our galaxy. Let's just hope some astronomical image enhancement engineer doesn't try to airbrush out the cat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P-yAkBbIV0).
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/13/12730905-revisiting-a-cosmic-cats-paw?lite