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posted by janrinok on Tuesday September 06 2016, @04:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the say-cheese dept.

The closest star system to the Earth is the famous Alpha Centauri group. Located in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur), at a distance of 4.3 light-years, this system is made up of the binary formed by the stars Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, plus the faint red dwarf Alpha Centauri C, also known as Proxima Centauri.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has given us this stunning view of the bright Alpha Centauri A (on the left) and Alpha Centauri B (on the right), flashing like huge cosmic headlamps in the dark. The image was captured by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). WFPC2 was Hubble's most used instrument for the first 13 years of the space telescope's life, being replaced in 2009 by WFC3 during Servicing Mission 4. This portrait of Alpha Centauri was produced by observations carried out at optical and near-infrared wavelengths.


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  • (Score: 2) by Dunbal on Tuesday September 06 2016, @04:37PM

    by Dunbal (3515) on Tuesday September 06 2016, @04:37PM (#398185)

    The point of light in the sky under intense magnification looks like - a point of light in the sky!

    Astronomers have a lot of patience and a lot of imagination. And people really have no concept of just how big space REALLY is.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday September 06 2016, @04:53PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday September 06 2016, @04:53PM (#398196) Journal
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    • (Score: 2) by Dunbal on Tuesday September 06 2016, @05:24PM

      by Dunbal (3515) on Tuesday September 06 2016, @05:24PM (#398203)

      Thus the "patience" part. Like the patience in explaining that 2 or 4 pixels is a fantastic improvement over one.

    • (Score: 2) by Jiro on Tuesday September 06 2016, @07:21PM

      by Jiro (3176) on Tuesday September 06 2016, @07:21PM (#398248)

      Alpha Centauri isn't in that Wikipedia list, and the original article doesn't claim that Alpha Centauri was resolved to any number of actual pixels across. Even the phrase "best image" is only from the headline, and news headlines usually aren't written by the same people as the matching news article.

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday September 06 2016, @07:28PM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday September 06 2016, @07:28PM (#398254) Journal

        An incomplete list is as follows:

        ...

        This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

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        • (Score: 5, Funny) by maxwell demon on Tuesday September 06 2016, @07:43PM

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday September 06 2016, @07:43PM (#398259) Journal

          Ah, now I finally understand where dark energy is coming from:

          Someone put a notice on the universe: "This universe is incomplete; you can help by expanding it."

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          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
          • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 07 2016, @08:51AM

            by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday September 07 2016, @08:51AM (#398622) Homepage
            It's about time that edit was reverted, or at least [citation needed] added.
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        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Jiro on Tuesday September 06 2016, @09:11PM

          by Jiro (3176) on Tuesday September 06 2016, @09:11PM (#398289)

          All the stars in the list are either
          1) Viewed with the CHARA Array, which is a scientific breakthrough for such images, or
          2) Very large in angular diameter as visible from the Earth

          Alpha Centauri falls in neither of those categories.

          If you think that that picture has resolved Alpha Centauri as more than a blurred point of light, I'd have to see a source. The original article doesn't claim this and only uses the vague term "best image", (and only in the headline).

          Also, a simple back of the envelope calculation shows that Alpha Centauri was not resolved. The size of Betelgeuse is 50 mas according to the list. The Wikipedia article for Betelgeuse shows a picture that is at most 10 pixels across (and even then, don't assume that each square in the image is actually a pixel). This means that a star would have to be at least 10 mas to be 2 pixels across using Hubble. Wikipedia's article for "angular diameter" lists it as being 7 mas.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday September 06 2016, @06:28PM

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Tuesday September 06 2016, @06:28PM (#398229)

    Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.

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