Your suggestion for image slideshow

[WalrusLike]

Hi folks,

I am after any links to good images that you can suggest. I am going to present a short talk and slideshow in lunch hour at work covering the expanding scale from LEO to our solar sytem to nearby stars to galaxies to clusters.. etc out to the foam model of the universe.

These are non-science folk so the images need to be stunning to make it worth their while. I am currently looking around for images and would be delighted if anyone has any links to images they feel would be suitable.

I intend to have a scale model of our system in the ten metres of space in the room I have... so I will be trying to give folk a sense of scale as well. The models will need to be based on a sun using a blow up beachball. This will require some manipulation of scales... I am still fiddling with the idea so welcome suggestions. I currently think I will have a inner system ten metres and a total system ten metres... and the ball models will be many times oversize on that scale... just so long as I explain that they are overscale.

This is a kinda silly, bit embarrassing, thing that I volunteered for a few weeks ago after listening to 365 days of astro podcast... outreach to others kinda thing. Thanks for any suggestions.

[Neverfly]

Hi folks,

I am after any links to good images that you can suggest. I am going to present a short talk and slideshow in lunch hour at work covering the expanding scale from LEO to our solar sytem to nearby stars to galaxies to clusters.. etc out to the foam model of the universe.

These are non-science folk so the images need to be stunning to make it worth their while. I am currently looking around for images and would be delighted if anyone has any links to images they feel would be suitable.

I intend to have a scale model of our system in the ten metres of space in the room I have... so I will be trying to give folk a sense of scale as well. The models will need to be based on a sun using a blow up beachball. This will require some manipulation of scales... I am still fiddling with the idea so welcome suggestions. I currently think I will have a inner system ten metres and a total system ten metres... and the ball models will be many times oversize on that scale... just so long as I explain that they are overscale.

This is a kinda silly, bit embarrassing, thing that I volunteered for a few weeks ago after listening to 365 days of astro podcast... outreach to others kinda thing. Thanks for any suggestions.

You may need to take them out to a football field if you want a scale model of the entire solar system with the Sun represented by a Beachball

[WalrusLike]

You may need to take them out to a football field if you want a scale model of the entire solar system with the Sun represented by a Beachball

Thats why I said I would use manipulation of scales... the models will be scaled to each other and then I will explain that they are x times oversize on the floor scale... ie the 10 m is used to give positional concept and the models relative sizes but really the earth will be a tiny dot... etc.

[WalrusLike]

In my web travels so far I have collected some images but I realise now that I should have also collected their urls and some descriptive text. From now on I will, and also I will put some links in here because I think these images are among the best I have seen. One of the good sites is apod.nasa.gov/apod/
So far I have: aurora over yellowknife, a cool graphic of a dry earth beside a small ball of water with a tiny ball of freshwater, crab nebula, eta carinae, m31, m51, sun prominence, pacific ocean from leo, ngc6217, hubble deep field, mars....
in no particular order

Somewhere I have a model image of the foam-like structure postulated for the overall universe... that is a thought-provoking one.

I am a bit surprised that no-one has a favourite they want to share... oh well...

[Neverfly]

I am a bit surprised that no-one has a favourite they want to share... oh well...

Speaking for myself, I can think of favorites I would want to share, but I have some uncertainty on copywrites for some of them.

But one thing you might try is google Images.
Type in a word and see what you get. Sift through a few pages.
Example: Go to google images and type
Stellar field
or
Planets
or
Asteroid belt
or
Deep space

...so on and just collect whatever beauty that pops up (Super models included if you have Moderate Safe search turned off.)

[geonuc]

APOD is certainly good. You might also try nasaimages.org.

[Murphy]

You can get some good pictures on Wikipedia. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Co...ures/Astronomy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...nces/Astronomy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...netary_science

But like others suggest, just search Google, and don't worry about copyright, no astronomers are going to sue you . Screw copyright.

[speedfreek]

Nasa/ESA/Hubble generally allow free use of their images/videos anyway, as long as you credit them.

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedi...uidelines.html

http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Intellectua...GG25WVD_0.html

http://hubblesite.org/about_us/copyright.php

For your largest scale images, I might suggest http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galfo...go/millennium/

[geonuc]

But like others suggest, just search Google, and don't worry about copyright, no astronomers are going to sue you . Screw copyright.

Uh, no. Please don't advocate breaking the law. Although for the OP's stated purpose, it might constitute fair use.

[WalrusLike]

Thanks folks for the image sites... very good material there.

Uh, no. Please don't advocate breaking the law. Although for the OP's stated purpose, it might constitute fair use.

Yes I believe that in areas like astronomical images, if using for educational purposes you are ok. Having said that.. I will keep a eye on usage policies from the sites I collect the images.

There is a surprising amount of effort involved in collecting and organising these. I figure it will take about a month or so to do... not much free time lately... I do hope it doesn't go over like the proverbial lead balloon.

I am also going to go out on a limb (given the audience will be general population office workers... some of whom will have a pet conspiracy theory,) and show a LRO image of the lunar tracks and vehicles.

If anyone does have particular images of anything that they think stunning please don't hesitate to post. Thanks again.

[WalrusLike]

Since Murphy makes the laws I was compelled to follow his links and am particularly impressed with this one....



http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Star-sizes.jpg

And this one also:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fileione_and_Saturn.jpg

I live in Oz so one thing I want to say to the audience is that our galaxy has about a thousand stars for every man, woman and child in Australia.

I was thinking of taking something as a model of each persons thousand stars... say a jar of sand or something. Any ideas of what would be a good 'thousand' (varying sizes would be good) example?

[Murphy]

Nice, but the one thing comes to my mind is that I think there's more than 1,000 stars in the Galaxy for every Australian.

There's about 20 million Australians, so a thousand times that is only 20 Billion stars. But the true figure is more like 200 Billion, or 10,000 stars for each Aussie.

[WalrusLike]

...There's about 20 million Australians, so a thousand times that is only 20 Billion stars. But the true figure is more like 200 Billion, or 10,000 stars for each Aussie.

I love it... my maths sucks and the bloke that points it out is called Murphy!!!

Something went wrong... its almost like a law with me....

Ok... thanks for that... much better now... 10,000 stars per person.

Anyone know something that would be 10,000 items in a smallish package?

[Neverfly]

Anyone know something that would be 10,000 items in a smallish package?

Umm... A jar of sand?

[WalrusLike]

...Anyone know something that would be 10,000 items in a smallish package?

This is turning out to be harder than I imagined... after spilling rice on the counter and starting to count it... then giving up when I realised it would take forever. Too much error margin in estimating it without a laborious count.

I looked on the net and so far haven't found an answer I am happy with. I could use something like a box of matches and say that everyone gets 200 boxes of matches with each match representing a star. (assuming 50 matches per box??)

I would be most pleased to hear anyone's suggestions.

[Neverfly]

This is turning out to be harder than I imagined... after spilling rice on the counter and starting to count it... then giving up when I realised it would take forever. Too much error margin in estimating it without a laborious count.

I looked on the net and so far haven't found an answer I am happy with. I could use something like a box of matches and say that everyone gets 200 boxes of matches with each match representing a star. (assuming 50 matches per box??)

I would be most pleased to hear anyone's suggestions.

Instead of counting individually, go by volume or weight.

As with Sand or Rice- weigh a sample- then calculate how much of that sample you need (how much weight) to equal 10,000 individual units adding up to that weight.

There's some error margin, but I doubt anyone is going to sit down mid-presentation to count the grains of sand to see if you're right.

[sirius0]

Why not put the free software package celestia on a projector? Give them a sense of actually being there...

[sirius0]

A $100 note is a package of 10,000 cents....

[sirius0]

Instead of counting individually, go by volume or weight.

As with Sand or Rice- weigh a sample- then calculate how much of that sample you need (how much weight) to equal 10,000 individual units adding up to that weight.

There's some error margin, but I doubt anyone is going to sit down mid-presentation to count the grains of sand to see if you're right.

I agree, in fact the total for the stars is probably arrived at in a similar manner.

[WalrusLike]

Thanks guys.... I get that.

Thats why I was counting rice on the kitchen bench. The problem is getting enough counted to make a big enough volume or weight to keep the error margin reasonable. Even using doubling shape sizes on a flat plane was going to take forever.

Maybe I am just a bit too pedantic but I have seen too many back-of-the-envelope guestimates that are wildly wrong because of un-thought-of complications to trust the physicist approximations... 'assume a grain size of 3mm with a packing ratio of x /per layer' etc.

Reminds me of the physicists approximation of a chicken farm.. 'assume a .3 metre spherical chicken packed in a hexagonal grid....." and so on.

I am sure this info is out there... I just am not good enough at search to locate it yet. And yeah the number of stars no doubt has a good sized fudge factor but I am assuming it is at least rigorously estimated... so I need to be fairly accurate too.

[Neverfly]

Thanks guys.... I get that.

Thats why I was counting rice on the kitchen bench. The problem is getting enough counted to make a big enough volume or weight to keep the error margin reasonable. Even using doubling shape sizes on a flat plane was going to take forever.

I sort of considered you were going in this direction.
But for your purposes- close enough should be good enough.

I am sure this info is out there... I just am not good enough at search to locate it yet.

I'm terrible at searches. I cannot seem to figure out keywords like other people do on what to search for.

[sirius0]

i'm sirius about the suggestion of celestia but I have never tried to project it to an audience. Has anyone out there done this? does it look as good as on the computer or does it pixilate or blur? WalrusLike if this worked you would be able to take them on a virtual 3D tour of the solar system even whiz around a few galaxies, take them well over the speed of light!!!

[WalrusLike]

.... WalrusLike if this worked you would be able to take them on a virtual 3D tour of the solar system even whiz around a few galaxies, take them well over the speed of light!!!

Thank you for your searius suggestion...

I would love to try that but corporate software policies wont allow it. I can only go with a powerpoint type presentation.

[Murphy]

You do know that Celestia is a free Open Source program, right? I doubt there would be any copyright problem, and besides nobody said you had to tell them...

[sirius0]

You do know that Celestia is a free Open Source program, right? I doubt there would be any copyright problem, and besides nobody said you had to tell them...

Yes, but Walruslike is right, sigh,I can't put any free software on my work computer either. I wonder if your corporation donated to celestia? Or you could just bring in your own computer....