'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 …

[DJ Smiley]

Is it sad...

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

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

yes?

unless you had fun smoking whatever it was.

[Paul Woodhouse]

Yes

[BasevaInc]

Me too!!!

[Christoph]

They've found the Iron Chicken?

[DJ 2]

Where is the chicken?

I would have named it, The Inquisitive Firefox.

[JDX]

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?

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

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.

[John G Imrie]

Compensation

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

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

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.

[Daniel Evans]

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.

[Jon Axtell]

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.

[bugalugs]

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

[Hazel-roo]

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

[Martin]

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

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Chicken? Where?

And where can I get some of those drugs?

[Kharkov]

So the Phoenix is coming?

Marvel X-Men fans prepare!

[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.

[CD001]

Looks more like a Chocobo to me

[Anonymous Coward]

Too late

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

[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

[Armando 123]

Astrogeek here

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

[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.

[Guido Esperanto]

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

[Robin Szemeti]

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.

[Archimedes_Circle]

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.

[Lars]

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).

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Just ate chicken for dinner

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

And it's coming for me.

[<user />]

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.

[NJS]

Okay...

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

[Michael Dunn]

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.