"Hubble 3-D" made a splash this year in big-screen movie theaters, and now 3-D imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope can make a splash on your computer as well. This week the Hubble team released a red-blue video clip providing a fly-through of the Carina Nebula, its featured image of the week.
"The 3-D interpretation uses lots of artistic license, so it is not intended to be scientifically accurate," according to a posting about the video clip on Slashdot.
Here's how the Hubble team explains the scene: "The stars and nebula layers from Hubble's two-dimensional image have been separated using both scientific knowledge and artistic license to create the depth in the movie. Of note, the relative distances between stars and the nebula have been greatly compressed."
You'll need red-blue glasses to see the 3-D effect, and you'll want to select the fullscreen option to maximize the awesomeness. Over the past couple of years I've mailed out about 75 3-D spectacles to Cosmic Log readers, and I'll send more spectacles to the first 25 people who make a request as a comment below ... assuming that I can get in touch with you through the Newsvine registration system, of course. The 3-D glasses are being provided courtesy of Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope project. (Microsoft and NBC Universal are partners in the msnbc.com joint venture.)
You won't need 3-D glasses to check out these other goodies on the Web:
- Inside Science: Tying string theory together
- 'Nova' on PBS: 'What Darwin Never Knew' (replay)
- Cracked: Six scientific reasons you're a bad employee
Update for 3:30 p.m. ET Sept. 20: I have more requests than there are spectacles, but I will see if I can scrounge up more for the people who have requested them up to this point. I'll be sending out messages today requesting your mailing addresses. If for some reason I don't get in touch with you by Tuesday, send an e-mail to alan-at-thecaseforpluto-dot-com.
Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case forPluto."
