Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Iridescent Glory of Nearby Helix Nebula.jpg

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Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes.Voting period ends on 7 Feb 2012 at 03:30:14 (UTC)
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The Helix Nebula
The Helix Nebula (also known as The Helix, NGC 7293, or Caldwell 63) is a large planetary nebula (PN) located in the constellation Aquarius. The Helix has often been referred to as the Eye of God on the Internet, since about 2003.
With a resolution 16,000 × 16,000 and a filesize 37.15 246.9 MB this is one of the best (if not the best) images of the Helix nebula.
Image was nominated before but I do feel it deserves another go given the upload of improved version by Tryphon since the nominaiton.
Other image (featured)
  •  Comment Wahhhh. Amazing! But wait, I can see HUGE pixels... so what are those 37 Mb for if resolution is not that good in the end? Takes hours to open, but I could open in 10 sec a similar file with almost the same res I think, am I wrong? --Paolo Costa (talk) 04:01, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is not the same image. Compared to the 2004 version (the other image) way more effort was given to the creation of this image due to a meteor storm so it is more accurate I believe. You'll notice old image has more "red" and colors are actually off in other ways as well.
Story: "Valuable Hubble observing time became available during the November 2002 Leonid meteor storm. To protect the spacecraft, including HST's precise mirror, controllers turned the aft end into the direction of the meteor stream for about half a day. Fortunately, the Helix Nebula was almost exactly in the opposite direction of the meteor stream, so Hubble used nine orbits to photograph the nebula while it waited out the storm. To capture the sprawling nebula, Hubble had to take nine separate snapshots."
  • Mind that the source image is a 285.99 MB TIFF file which unfortunately isn't as easy to carry to Wikipedia. I will try to upload a better copy though as I am downloading this TIFF. The pixels are the detail Hubble is capable of. Aside from looking good the pixel color differences gives us better clue on how the material is distributed in the planetary nebula (back when I first uploaded it, my computer had less ram than the size of the TIFF file). So it is supposed to be pixelated when zoomed in too much I believe.
-- とある白い猫 ちぃ？ 13:24, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
Yes, the massive pixels are a product of low quality JPG. I'll be working on this right away. The better quality version is at 4shared.com, though I am not sure if devs will agree to upload it here yet. -- とある白い猫 ちぃ？ 13:49, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I still see huge pixels, but now the image is way higher in size, which requires even more time to open. That's probably not the way to solve the issue, it's not a matter of compression of the tiff, nor the fact that the file was made out of 9 separate images. If I have a photo of 2 by 2 px of information and make it larger I can now have a lot more pixels, but the information is gonna be only 4 pixels, in 4 squares, repeating themselves. I'm not adding quality/information to the file, only weight. That's what appears to be happening here. As for the second upload, I think 250 Mb is really too much, you probably want to revert the picture to its previous size of 37 Mbs. Just an opinion. --Paolo Costa (talk) 12:25, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reduced size is reduced quality in this case though. I do not believe there are giant squares anymore. There are subtle differences in pixels, the difference is small due to the increased resolution. Are you sure it isn't a setting issue? I am not sure if I understand your concern completely. I thought I did which is why I went to great lengths to upgrade quality. :/ -- とある白い猫 ちぃ？ 12:54, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I still see them, even refreshing the file. I don't know, could be a setting issue... it never happened to me before, even on large panos of approx. 100 Mbs. But I'm not sure, it could be a problem on my computer, that's why I'm not opposing. Maybe we can get an opinion from another user. --Paolo Costa (talk) 16:56, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Crop: Comet-like Filaments Along the Inner Rim of the Helix Nebula's Gas Ring
Crop: Another close-up of the Helix Nebula
  • The file is using what came from NASA/ESA/Hubble. I have not increased the resolution artificially by stretching the image. :) Mind you we do not really expect the viewer to view the file full. I am unaware of any computer that can display in 16k by 16k resolution. :) When you downscale the file down to screen size or printable size it should not show pixelization of any kind. If the person wants to print this image into a poster the size of the ones in times square, it should still not show pixels. High resoluition allows this. What it also allows is if someone wants to zoom to a specific point and crop that detail as the very center could be of great importance like here. If the file is downscaled down to 3k by 3k pixels it would loose that kind of detail.
  • By the way the individual stars you see may be pixelated as they are out of focus. The stars and the nebula are light years apart (literally). The object (nebula) you see is about 2.87 lightyears wide (~2,715,171,650,000 kilometers or ~1,687,129,450,000 miles) so it would take you 2.87 years to get to one side to the other if you are traveling at the speed of light!
-- とある白い猫 ちぃ？ 19:43, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
  • To give you a better idea, the nearest star to the Sun is Alpha Centauri C which is 4.24 light years away making the nebula's radius ~0.677/10ths the distance to there. Indeed the numbers are crazy. :) -- とある白い猫 ちぃ？ 21:22, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
Confirmed results:
Result: 5 support, 0 oppose, 0 neutral → not featured. /George Chernilevsky talk 05:52, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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