Like the Sun observed under x-rays showed the Skylab astronauts vast dark regions and profound chasms on what was apparently a smooth and bright surface, the sky observed through different wavelengths showed a completely different structure than what we could see with our own eyes: there are places packed with stars that can appear almost empty and empty regions which instead are very powerful sources of energy. Having reached the limits of the possible due to the Earth's atmosphere, that filters and deforms all types of radiation, and since the new space telescope is not yet available, that seems to offer great expectations, it is these new forms of astronomy which have produced the most important discoveries of the last few decades. But to translate the data coming from this wide range of space "signals" into pictures it was necessary to invent a new visual language, a language that comes from that fascinating product of the twenty-first century - the electronic computer. This technique - which as we have already seen, has provided the most recent images of Saturn, Uranus and Halley's comet - was developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena between the end of the Sixties and the beginning of the Seventies to process the pictures transmitted by the American Mariner probes. For the astronomer, it is now the natural extension of the telescope. Capable of transforming each single signal into a graphic sign, the computers produce the famous "false color" images, but in which nothing has been invented; on the contrary, the smallest feature of the object being studied appears with the best enhancement: the dazzling colors of the electronic images are nothing other than visual codes destined to highlight what would otherwise be invisible phenomena, extending our modest perceptive capabilities. The first electronic processing in astronomy was performed on a series of photographic plates obtained in 1975 from the Chilean observatory of Cerro Tololo and immediately led to the discovery of a phenomenon that no one even suspected the existence: very strong radiation beams were being transmitted from the center of a spiral galaxy, catalogued as NGC 1079. These beams extended into space for billions of kilometers and one was even bent at a right angle. Absolutely invisible in the original plate, these extraordinary "rays" emitted by the galaxy at different angles still remain a mystery for astronomers who are hotly debating their origin.
Like the Sun observed under x-rays showed the Skylab astronauts vast dark regions and profound chasms on what was apparently a smooth and bright surface, the sky observed through different wavelengths showed a completely different structure than what we could see with our own eyes: there are places packed with stars that can appear almost empty and empty regions which instead are very powerful sources of energy. Having reached the limits of the possible due to the Earth's atmosphere, that filters and deforms all types of radiation, and since the new space telescope is not yet available, that seems to offer great expectations, it is these new forms of astronomy which have produced the most important discoveries of the last few decades. But to translate the data coming from this wide range of space "signals" into pictures it was necessary to invent a new visual language, a language that comes from that fascinating product of the twenty-first century - the electronic computer. This technique - which as we have already seen, has provided the most recent images of Saturn, Uranus and Halley's comet - was developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena between the end of the Sixties and the beginning of the Seventies to process the pictures transmitted by the American Mariner probes. For the astronomer, it is now the natural extension of the telescope. Capable of transforming each single signal into a graphic sign, the computers produce the famous "false color" images, but in which nothing has been invented; on the contrary, the smallest feature of the object being studied appears with the best enhancement: the dazzling colors of the electronic images are nothing other than visual codes destined to highlight what would otherwise be invisible phenomena, extending our modest perceptive capabilities. The first electronic processing in astronomy was performed on a series of photographic plates obtained in 1975 from the Chilean observatory of Cerro Tololo and immediately led to the discovery of a phenomenon that no one even suspected the existence: very strong radiation beams were being transmitted from the center of a spiral galaxy, catalogued as NGC 1079. These beams extended into space for billions of kilometers and one was even bent at a right angle. Absolutely invisible in the original plate, these extraordinary "rays" emitted by the galaxy at different angles still remain a mystery for astronomers who are hotly debating their origin.
