New Herschel Telescope Worthless?

First image of the Whirlpool Galaxy came out in BBC today at www.universetoday.com... This telescope cost $1 billion. Not complaining, but I took a pic of the same galaxy from my back yard with a $3000 telescope and got results nearly that good. Other guys take backyard photos better, too. Here's a backyard photo of the same galaxy: www.celestronimages.com... Which do you think is better?


[edit on 20-6-2009 by Jim Scott]

reply to post by Jim Scott


the BBC link is down...

can you try to link us again!

[edit on 20-6-2009 by adrenochrome]

Personally I think the second picture you linked is better. They have to be able to get some better shots than what was linked on the bbc.

Yeah the second is better...

Wasn't the first one infrared though?

"The Herschel Telescope has given us a sneak preview of the infrared observational goodness we can expect from this new space telescope."

Usually infrared is better anyways:

static.photo.net...

See how the tree has better branch details?


Anywho, this is odd.

I'm not sure about the image quality (could possibly be due to it being a test run), but the main point of Herschel is that it images in infrared light/radiation.

Because infrared isn't obscured as much by gas/dust it means that the telescope can see deeper into the centre of galaxies at objects that are generally difficult to see in other wavelengths.

And you probably wouldn't be able to take these kinds of pictures from your backgarden as the atmosphere absorbs a lot of the incoming infrared radiation, plus the background noise from pretty much everything around you would be horrific