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back to article 'Angry Bird in the Sky' spotted by astronomers

Astronomers peering through a mighty telescope in Chile have produced this stunning snap of the Lambda Centauri Nebula, also known as the "Running Chicken Nebula": The Lambda Centauri Nebula. Credit: ESO Spot the birdie. Larger version here. The Reg received this as part of an announcement from the European Southern …

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  1. DJ Smiley
    Facepalm

    Is it sad...

    ...that I can see the angry birds catapult plus some fired off blue birds in that photo?

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    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      yes?

      unless you had fun smoking whatever it was.

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    2. Paul Woodhouse
      Reply Icon

      Yes

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    3. BasevaInc
      Reply Icon
      WTF?

      Me too!!!

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  2. Christoph

    They've found the Iron Chicken?

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  3. DJ 2
    Joke

    Where is the chicken?

    I would have named it, The Inquisitive Firefox.

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  4. JDX Gold badge

    Astronomers have "produced" this stunning snap

    How much production went in to it, compared to just zooming in lots and lots and lots and lots? Fancy filters to make it look nice?

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    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Actually, the hard thing is to get a wide field

      No zooming required with a telescope, but a big (268 megapixel or so) camera to get this wide (OK maybe it was not the 268 megapixel OmegaCAM, but still a biggie). The other hard part is collecting enough data, as these objects are faint. Hours of exposure are needed, and postprocessing to remove artifacts introduced imperfections in the camera (dark-current, hot pixels, slight differences in pixel sensitivity, and shading by the optics), and finally dynamic-range compression to show both he brighter and fainter parts in one shot.

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      1. John G Imrie
        Reply Icon
        Boffin

        Compensation

        Not to mention compensating for the Earths rotation and the Earths rotation around the Sun.

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        1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
          Reply Icon
          Boffin

          That is fairly automatic these days

          The Earth's rotation is the big one, but even my little equatorial mount can correct quite nicely for that. I think the 2.2 m is also on an equatorial mount. Nowadays, autotrackers are available for amateur scopes, so this big kind of scope should be fine. The Earth's movement around the sun has very little effect, the parallax created in one night or a few days is smaller than the point spread function of the optics.

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    2. Daniel Evans
      Reply Icon

      And last, but not least...

      Compensation for atmospheric refraction, too (hence why the telescope is on a big hill in Chile - less air in the way). T'is why stars twinkle.

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  5. Jon Axtell
    Paris Hilton

    I see the bright central point as the beak and the bright stars horizontally to the left and above the central part as the eyes.

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    1. bugalugs
      Reply Icon
      Pint

      He's looking to his left and has two little stars 'bout where the nostrils would be, left and right wings upswept, legs trailing off to the southeast and even what might be taken for a bit of worm or tongue hanging from the tip of his beak. Last but not least a forward pointing comb - thus the " angry " chicken. Brilliant photography

      ^ and weed

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  6. Hazel-roo

    I think in this case... they should be called "bawk globules"...

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    1. Martin
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      ...make another joke like that, and you'll be told to buck off.

      I'll pick up your coat too, shall I?

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Chicken? Where?

    And where can I get some of those drugs?

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  8. Kharkov
    Happy

    So the Phoenix is coming?

    Marvel X-Men fans prepare!

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  9. Ben Rosenthal

    I pity anyone that can look and a stunning picture like that and still just be seeing Angry Birds.

    Put it away, you'll go blind.

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  10. CD001

    Looks more like a Chocobo to me

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Too late

    There's no chicken left - just a load of Tandoori sauce.

    2 0
  12. Aaron Em

    The chicken's not hard to find

    More pecking than running, though, I thought. Here --

    http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/9186/highlightedchicken.jpg

    0 1
  13. Armando 123

    Astrogeek here

    Thought it would just be a picture of the Eagle Nebula.

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  14. IR

    Vulture nebula

    Can't work out how it is meant to be a chicken, but I can spot what looks a lot like the vulture in the logo for this site.

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  15. Guido Esperanto
    Facepalm

    I see a goatse in that image...am I truly damned?

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  16. Robin Szemeti
    FAIL

    Nope ... not even a beak

    Color me stupid, but even with the "highlighted" snap kindly provided by someone, I cannot get any hint of chicken.

    Nice piccy though ... but the people who name these things must be whacked out on lens cleaner.

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    1. Archimedes_Circle
      Reply Icon
      Trollface

      If it helps, the chicken is supposed to be vertical, with the beak facing down in that picture. Essentially go get a laptop, bring the image up, and turn it to the right. Or rotate the screen if you want to be difficult. Dunno what kind of LSD these people were on to get this right off.

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  17. Lars Silver badge
    Pint

    Sorry

    but it does not look angry at all, lost perhaps and rather unhappy, dead or something, astronomy is a great adventure, I like it very much. Nice that we are still able to find new animals in the sky (night).

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  18. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge
    Coat

    Just ate chicken for dinner

    http://www.pixelmemory.us/Misc/angry_bird_space.jpg

    And it's coming for me.

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  19. <user />
    Pint

    To be fair, Angry Birds is over rated shite. Just had to share that.

    I concur with this statement:

    "I pity anyone that can look and a stunning picture like that and still just be seeing Angry Birds.

    Put it away, you'll go blind."

    A beverage for you, sir.

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  20. NJS

    Okay...

    ...who put Terry Pratchett in charge of naming celestial bodies

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  21. Michael Dunn
    Happy

    Bok Globules

    Thank you! You bring back Fred Hoyle's "Black Cloud" This is the first time I've come across this phrase since my last reading of that book decades ago.

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