Thread: The most important pictures

Interesting how this next picture follows along the lines of "Chinese Rule," but this picture is not only stunning but also horrifying:


Nothing about this picture isn't eerie. The strange calm state the monk is in and those around him. Ultimate sign of protest would be to give your life and if this image doesn't count in the top 10 as the most important pictures taken, well by God I don't know what does.


Also, in before afgan girl.

This is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image. They pointed our greatest telescope into a pitch black spot for 11 or 12 days to record this image. What makes it fascinating is the scale behind this image. Knowing, like in gismo's first post, the size of our planet and seeing it against the backdrop of space is a humbling experience. Knowing our Sun, in comparison to many stars out there, isn't particularly large or exciting, and knowing that in our galaxy alone, there are millions of stars and planetary systems, the sheer scope behind this image reduces me past words. Every spot of light in this picture is a galaxy, so far away that it is measured in billions of light years. I'm trying to avoid using big numbers to describe this because the concept is, for me at least, so large that my mind just blanks and cannot comprehend the real size of it. The scale makes me recoil if I think about it too long, but seeing that image, seeing the vastness of the universe, the great distances between everything and really sitting down and thinking about it... man it really puts things into perspective.

also, on a lighter note

self-immolating monk

tiananmen square protestor

Gismo, I was told in school that the kid who went in front of the tanks was soon after executed. I may have heard wrong but that is what I remember.

Originally Posted by coqauvin

This is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image. They pointed our greatest telescope into a pitch black spot for 11 or 12 days to record this image. What makes it fascinating is the scale behind this image. Knowing, like in gismo's first post, the size of our planet and seeing it against the backdrop of space is a humbling experience. Knowing our Sun, in comparison to many stars out there, isn't particularly large or exciting, and knowing that in our galaxy alone, there are millions of stars and planetary systems, the sheer scope behind this image reduces me past words. Every spot of light in this picture is a galaxy, so far away that it is measured in billions of light years. I'm trying to avoid using big numbers to describe this because the concept is, for me at least, so large that my mind just blanks and cannot comprehend the real size of it. The scale makes me recoil if I think about it too long, but seeing that image, seeing the vastness of the universe, the great distances between everything and really sitting down and thinking about it... man it really puts things into perspective.

I knew someone would bring this up. In my opinion, the picture isn't that amazing. There are plenty of more stunning images from space. I'm a numbers man so I prefer just hearing the scientific notation of possible planets and etc.

It's a cool image, but the implications don't change anything really.

Originally Posted by benzss

I don't really have anything particularly interesting to say about this except the symbolism is pretty nasty. It's a 'punch you in the mouth' kind of picture.

This is the picture that the guy in "House of Leaves" was to have gotten famous for.

Shitty, the vultures don't even wait til death.

Originally Posted by gismo

What do we know about him? There are certain theories, but to the best of my knowledge, his fate was uncertain. I have never met this man. I do not know what he looks like. I do not know his name or where he lived. I can only hope, and plead to any notion of justice in this world, that he is ok. This image manages to crystalise all that is great and terrible about out species. The metal death wagons on their way to massacre their fellow country men and women, and the lone hero making a stand against this injustice and saying "stop".

Originally Posted by k1nk0s

Gismo, I was told in school that the kid who went in front of the tanks was soon after executed. I may have heard wrong but that is what I remember.

No-one knows for sure who he was, what happened to him, or whether he's alive today. There are rumors and various theories, but since his identity is unknown, none of the rumors and theories are verifiable or supported by any real evidence.

Originally Posted by TheOriginalGrumpySpy

I knew someone would bring this up. In my opinion, the picture isn't that amazing. There are plenty of more stunning images from space. I'm a numbers man so I prefer just hearing the scientific notation of possible planets and etc.

I think it's significance is that the picture is of an area of space equivalent to what would be covered up by Abe Lincoln's eye if you held up a US penny at arm's length against the night sky. That's how tiny that area of sky is, and yet just look at all those galaxies (roughly 3,000 in that picture)... for people who aren't numbers men, it really drives home how buttfucking huge the universe is to realize that if you hold up a penny against the night sky, there are 3,000 galaxies behind Lincoln's eye. But visually, yeah, there are much more stunning pictures from space. For instance:



The Pillars of Creation, a famous picture of the Eagle Nebula. The Eagle Nebula is an enormous cloud of dust and gas and young stars about 7,000 light years away (for reference, the Milky Way galaxy is around 90,000 light years wide). New stars are born here. Incredibly gorgeous picture.
Here's a much higher res version: http://www.iconocast.com/00021_Japan/L3/News4_0.jpg

Originally Posted by gismo

That is such an enchanting image, images of space are amongst the most beautiful images I think humans have ever taken.

um let's not forget that most beautiful pictures of space are artificially colored images that look at wavelengths outside the visible range.

if you saw a visible light picture of this, it would hardly look like anything, maybe some very faint shadows of dust clouds.

Originally Posted by Syme

Um, that's only true for pictures taken by telescopes that detect only non-visible wavelengths. Many space images are taken by telescopes, such as the Hubble space telescope, that detect visible light. The "Pillars of Creation" pic was taken by the Hubble telescope in it's visible light mode (it can also detect UV light, but the UV mode wasn't used to take the Pillars of Creation pic). So if you could look at that part of the Eagle Nebula with your naked eye, you would see basically the same thing that's shown in the picture. The same is true of many other Hubble images (which is probably the largest single source of beautiful space pictures). And while it is true that the pic is artificially colored, NASA colorizes them in a way that is pretty close to what the naked eye would see. That's why the gas columns have that reddish-orange color, for instance; they are made mostly of hydrogen, and the hydrogen emission line is in the red part of the visible light spectrum.

Here is a website explaining how the Pillars of Creation imagery was processed. As you can see, the gathered imagery was all taken using filters for various parts of the visible light spectrum. No imaging on non-visible wavelengths was used to create that image.

Touche. Well, aside from the fact that there isn't a nearby light source strong enough to send a lot of light scattered from the nebula to us, I accept that I was wrong.

Originally Posted by Syme

Well, remember that the Eagle Nebula itself is actually full of young stars; they are scattered all throughout the structure of the nebula. It is also very near a group of extremely bright, hot, massive stars called NGC 6611, which are partially responsible for the spectacular illumination effects that can be seen in some pictures of the nebula. Viewing the nebula from the right place and the right direction, a naked-eye observer could probably get a pretty well-lit view of it all. I couldn't say for sure, though.

Interestingly, it is the intense radiation flux and stellar wind from the stars in NGC 6611 that is believed to be responsible for forming those incredible pillar and tower structures in the gas clouds. The "heads" of the pillars are regions of dust/gas that are denser than the surrounding regions, and thus aren't dissipated as easily by the radiation; and the bodies or "stems" of the pillars are formed by gas/dust that is in the shadows of these dense regions and thus remain in place while the rest of the gas/dust around them blows away. Also interestingly, there is evidence that a supernova actually completely destroyed (blew away) the "Pillars of Creation" and many other distinctive Eagle Nebula features six thousand years ago, but we won't know for sure for another thousand years, since they're seven thousand light years away.

/astronomy ramble

Yes I remember hearing about how radiation pressure formed the structure of this nebula, though I don't remember as many details as you have. That's pretty cool.

I'm a little surprised, however, that we have evidence for a supernova destroying this structure 6k years ago... how could we possibly have this information before we see it? It's obvious that we don't have direct information about this event, as we if did we would have received this information faster than the speed of light. Is this speculated from the phase and size of the star whose supernova is thought to have destroyed this nebula?

Originally Posted by sycld

I'm a little surprised, however, that we have evidence for a supernova destroying this structure 6k years ago... how could we possibly have this information before we see it? It's obvious that we don't have direct information about this event, as we if did we would have received this information faster than the speed of light. Is this speculated from the phase and size of the star whose supernova is thought to have destroyed this nebula?

Yeah, basically. Current pictures of the Eagle Nebula (which show it as it was 7000 years ago) also show a supernova occurring in the background. Based on the proximity of the star to the nebula , it's projected that the expanding gas bubble from that supernova would have reached the nebula about 1000 years after the supernova occurred, thus about 6000 years ago. So in another 1000 years, it will have been 7000 years since the supernova shock front hit the nebula and destroyed the "Pillars" formation, and that's when the light from the event will arrive and our descendants in 3009 AD will get to see what it looks like. I sorta wish I could be around to see it... but I'm sure the next century's advances in telescope technology will give me plenty of other incredible space pics to look at for the rest of my life.

EDIT: In fact, if I'm not mistaken, that incredibly bright pinkish-white star located just to the right of the tallest pillar, about two-thirds of the way down, is the supernova that has probably already wiped out the pillars.

2nd Edit: Going with famous wartime pictures, this one is pretty well-known too:



The officer executing the prisoner is Nguyen Ngoc Loan. After the war, he moved to the US and opened a restaurant in my hometown of Burke, Virginia; it was located in a shopping center right near my family's house. His place closed in the '90s, though, and now there is a really good Chinese restaurant operating in the same spot. I still live in the area (not in Burke anymore, but about 20 minutes away) and eat there occasionally.

Originally Posted by Syme

2nd Edit: Going with famous wartime pictures, this one is pretty well-known too:



The officer executing the prisoner is Nguyen Ngoc Loan. After the war, he moved to the US and opened a restaurant in my hometown of Burke, Virginia; it was located in a shopping center right near my family's house. His place closed in the '90s, though, and now there is a really good Chinese restaurant operating in the same spot. I still live in the area (not in Burke anymore, but about 20 minutes away) and eat there occasionally.

Holy shite, this general lived out the end of his life in Burke and opened a restaurant in a mall there?! I wish I had known; my family loves Vietnamese food, and we could've said we ate at this guy's restaurant...

Originally Posted by Syme

Hahah, it was a pizza place. But yeah. You know the Rolling Valley shopping mall, at the corner of Shiplett and Old Keene? That's where it was. It was where the Tau Tau (that good Chinese place) is today.

Ahaha, it was some (probably) second-rate pizza place on top of it? Wow, what a major downgrade in social status...

Also, I'm not really familiar with Burke. I'm up in the MD suburbs of DC and DC mostly, and the I don't know much about NOVA outside Arlington, Rosslyn, Alexandria, and the like.

robocop is jesus

Originally Posted by Bowzer

then why does detroit still suck?

Poor sequels

Okay that lego one cracked me up something fierce even as I felt myself become a worse person for it.