Random Astro Stuff

I've got a few random cool astro-things on my desktop from various emails/alerts I've recieved. I thought you might find some of this stuff interesting.

PanStarrs got first light on their new giga-pixel camera a few days ago. This is an image of a galaxy, without any corrections applied. The image is taken by a 64x64 array of 0.36 megapixel chips. There's a lot of processing that takes this raw, messy looking image into a nice calibrated astronomical image. In March 2006, I helped out with the construction of the dome for this prototype. Now, the scope is finished and they're testing out the cameras.

Akari made a new all-sky map in the infra-red.

An IR image of Orion from Akari.

A NASA scope caught a nearby star shedding material as it whizzes through space - a UV mosaic of Mira.... Looks a lot like a comet doesn't it.

Spitzer made an expanded mosaic of the Helix....