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SETI@home Staff Blog :
The Outsider's Inside View post#020 - Right of Center
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KevinDouglasPhD Send message Joined: 6 Feb 06 Posts: 107 Credit: 23,981 RAC: 0 |
Things are going well, if a bit slowly. On Friday vader had some problems so 4 of my SETHI jobs got killed. I restarted two of them on lando and one on thumper, and the last one was restarted on vader this morning. That one might be the last of the 144 datacubes that gets made. I have 131 done, so only 13 left to go. With the GALFA data, I've been inspecting my cubes for quality purposes, and discoverd the joy of finding galaxies at high velocities. Here's an example; this is NGC 3274 in optical: and here is an image of it with GALFA data, after co-adding about 250 velocity channels together: I'm afraid I don't have the angular scale of the optical image at the moment. Anyway, let's use the 3-D nature of the datacubes to look at NGC 3274 along the other axis projections. Here's RA by velocity: and velocity by declination: And finally, the spectrum of the galaxy, at a pixel somewhere near its center: So, this galaxy, like most others, is right of center, ie. at a positive velocity, so it's moving away from us (redshifted). Neat, eh? I've found about 40 galaxies so far, and I've got several more cubes to look at. I think with an automated search we'll find some that the eye can't pick up too. I've been enjoying the NHL final. Glad Pronger got suspended for his high hit. I will be going up to Canada this Thursday/Friday, so it's too bad no games are scheduled those days. It's for a job interview, so I'm also busy preparing for that. |
Jim_S Send message Joined: 23 Feb 00 Posts: 4705 Credit: 64,560,357 RAC: 31 |
Kevin, You do really "Cool" work sir! Very interesting updates and informative narration. I Desire Peace and Justice, Jim Scott (Mod-Ret.) |
Wander Saito Send message Joined: 7 Jul 03 Posts: 555 Credit: 2,136,061 RAC: 0 |
I think the SECOND best feature of these posts must be way you manage to explain what you're doing, or what this or that is in plain English. The first? These cool pics you publish in every post! Thanks Kevin. Regards, Wander |
KWSN - Chicken of Angnor Send message Joined: 9 Jul 99 Posts: 1199 Credit: 6,615,780 RAC: 0 |
Eye candy never hurts! Seriously though, these analyses/graphs look pretty neat. What would interest me is what these may be used for in the future (the datacubes/the fully-assembled data you calculated in them) - sadly, I'm not an astronomer and have no real idea what HI-spectra are useful for. Some people mentioned that the data harvested by your datacubes would be useful for other applications, but not which. I'm just nosy, I know..."intrigued" would sound better ;o) Regards, Simon. Donate to SETI@Home via PayPal! Optimized SETI@Home apps + Information |
ML1 Send message Joined: 25 Nov 01 Posts: 21186 Credit: 7,508,002 RAC: 20 |
What would interest me is what these may be used for in the future (the datacubes/the fully-assembled data you calculated in them) - sadly, I'm not an astronomer and have no real idea what HI-spectra are useful for. Construct the 3-D shape of our galaxy and nearby galaxies? Check the velocities to see how our galaxy will change shape and evolve? Check that physics appears to be working as we understand it?! Or?... It all certainly looks good! Happy crunchin', Martin See new freedom: Mageia Linux Take a look for yourself: Linux Format The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3) |
Odysseus Send message Joined: 26 Jul 99 Posts: 1808 Credit: 6,701,347 RAC: 6 |
I'm afraid I don't have the angular scale of the optical image at the moment. It looks exactly like the red-light POSSI image that Aladin brings up for NGC 3274: 14.1 arc-minutes square, at about 1.7"/pixel. The galaxy itself is listed as subtending just over 1.8'. |
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