HubbleSpacePhotos.com

Those are the initials for various catalogs of astronomical objects. "M" stands for Messier (an astronomer), NGC stands for New General Catalog. I guess NIC stands for New International Catalog.

For instance, M81 is the 81st item listed by Messier and NGC4214 is the 4214th item in the New General Catalog. Some of the items also have popular names such as the Andromeda Galaxy.

Items in older catalogs are also listed in the newer catalogs, under different numbers.

NICMOS and WPF are two of the cameras on Hubble.

2) What is the big deal about Jesus?

That requires a fairly detailed explanation that is beyond the scope of this website. See this link for information: About Jesus

3) Why do you have 'Shroud of Turin' junk? Don't you know that in 1988 scientists conclusively proved by radiocarbon dating that the Shroud only dates back to the Middle Ages, around 1300 A.D.?

The radiocarbon dating was performed on a sample cut from one corner of the Shroud, in a portion where there is no image. In the mid-2000's a husband and wife couple (who were not scientists) realized that photomicrographs (ultra-high resolution photos) taken in the late 70's by a member of the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) showed that there was a previously unsuspected repair of the Shroud and that the entire sample was taken from the repaired section.

Without identifying the object photographed or who took the images, they submitted the images to three textile experts, each of whom said the images definitely showed an expert repair using a "French reweave" technique common in Europe in the early modern era. The technique wove in a piece of cotton and the cotton was then dyed to match the color of the surrounding linen. This is possible because linen is highly resistant to dye but cotton is not. The repair was done so expertly that even under high magnification and close inspection, none of the STURP team had noticed any difference. The couple managed to get a scientific paper published and to present their findings at a respected conference.

When the paper was published, Ray Rogers, the scientist who had taken the photomicrophs, read it and his reaction was, "That's ridiculous! These people aren't even scientists! I have sample fibers we took during the examination. I can prove their theory is false!

Rogers put a sample under the microscope and got the shock of his career when, instead, he confirmed their theory! He saw that clearly there were cotton threads interwoven into linen threads and the cotton was dyed to match the linen. Because Rogers knew he was dying of cancer, he called another member of STURP, photographer Barrie Schwortz, told him his results, Schwortz videotaped interview footage with him, and he prepared a paper and submitted it to a scientific journal five days before his death. Subsequently the paper was accepted and published in 2008. Schwortz also examined X-ray false-color flourescence images taken by STURP and pointed out that in the entire Shroud, the only area that came out green was the area from which the sample was taken—indicating that that area had a different chemical composition than the rest of the Shroud. Prior to the discovery of the previously unknown repair, no one had noticed the anomaly. The interviews with Rogers and Schwortz were included in a December 2008 documentary on the Discovery Channel titled Unwrapping the Shroud: New Evidence.

4) Are the images or the video copyrighted?

As far as I know, no.

Regarding the "Nailing to the Cross" Flash video, I ran across it years ago on a website. As far as I know, the site is no longer up. If I remember correctly, the author did not object to other people using it. Unfortunately, I don't remember his name or how to contact him. There may be some information in the video source but I don't have Flash Shockwave Macromedia authoring software, so I can't check.

I put together the Praises to God animated GIF praise-anim.gif and the animated GIFs used by the Trail of Stars script. You can use them without requesting permission. I would appreciate a link back to this site or to God On The Net.

5) Is it okay to download them?

Yes.

6) Can I have your permission to use the photos on my site? To publish them? To link to your site? etc.

I have no ownership interest in any of the image files, including the "Nailing to the Cross" Flash video. You don't need my permission. I created the animated religious GIFs. You can use them without my permission. If you do, I would appreciate a link to the site.

Regarding linking, permission isn't needed, not even for "deep" links, i.e., pages other than the home page. Telling someone they need permission to link to a site is like saying, "You can't tell people which stores sell the book I published unless you get my permission." Hogwash!

7) Can I access the images directory directly, so I don't have to go from page to page to download images?

Full-size images are stored in the /pics subdirectory. Thumbnails are in /thumbs. You can access the subdirectories directly and download the individual files.

8) Where can I get all the Hubble photos?

I don't think there is any such place. Hubble has taken millions of photos. For a fairly good selection, see the Links page.

9) What is the meaning of file or object names like 9832a or 0012b?

I'm not sure. My guess is that the first two digits are the year the image was made. The second two either indicate the week or the number, i.e., 9832a was taken in 1998. Either it was taken in the 32nd week of 1998 or it was the 32nd image taken or released in 1998. The highest number I have found is 9943a, so I can't tell. Regarding the "a" or "b", those are multiple images of the same object, i.e., 9943c is the third image of the same object imaged in 9943a and 9943b.

The numbers are not astronomical catalog numbers! Anytime where the file name is an astronomical catalog number I included the catalog, e.g., M81 or NGC1512.

10) What is the difference between "Revelation" and "Apocalypse"?

In Roman Catholic translations, the final book of the New Testament is titled "Apocalypse", from the Greek word for "revelation". In Protestant and Messianic Jewish translations it is titled "Revelation". The contents are the same. I listed the scripture cites both ways so they can be found either way on search engines.

11) What is the connection between the Hubble images and the Bible verses?

Theologically, there is no connection. Mainly, an image just happened to bring to my mind a particular verse. Sometimes I searched for words like 'star' or 'heavens' and when I found an interesting verse I looked for an image that seemed to fit it. In other cases, I just picked an important verse even though there is no connection to the image.

12) Which Bible translation did you use?

Various translations were used, including the New King James Version (NKJV), New International Version (NIV), American Standard Version (ASV), and Revised Standard Version (RSV). I chose whatever sounded best and/or sort of described the image.

13) Since you believe in the Bible, I guess you don't believe in the Big Bang theory?

On the contrary, the Bible says, God created the heavens and stretched them out. It said that way before Edwin Hubble discovered galaxies and announced to the world on New Year's Day of 1925 that the universe is expanding. I am well aware of things like Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias winning a Nobel Prize for discovering the cosmic microwave radiation background while searching for sources of noise that affected telephone transmissions.

Biblical Hebrew verbs don't have tenses. There is no way to say, "I will go, I did go, I had gone," etc. There is only "completed" ("perfect") and "not completed" ("imperfect"). When it comes to the heavens and "stretch", interestingly . . . sometimes the Hebrew says God streched (completed) but other times it says God stretches (not completed). So . . . which is it? Is God finished or not? Well—according to science—it's both.The universe started out as a "dot" smaller than a proton, it expanded massively and virtually instantaneously ("the Inflationary period"), that expansion stopped, and then a different type of expansion, much slower, took over, ("cosmological expansion"), caused by "dark energy". Hmm . . . how did the Bible authors get that correct thousands of years ago?

14) How do you get links in multiple colors?

The usual HTML code for a link is something like this:

<FONT FACE="Arial">Check this: <A HREF="http://www.link.com">Link Name</A></FONT>

Using that code, the color of the link is whatever is listed in the <BODY> tag, e.g.

<BODY TEXT="black" LINK="red">

To force the link to display in a specified color, use this code instead:

Check this: <A HREF="http://www.link.com"><FONT FACE="Arial" COLOR="whatever">Link Name</FONT></A>

The difference is that the font color is specified inside of the reference tags.

Note: even if you specify a COLOR in the usual code, it will be ignored.

15) Somebody told me to check out the page for NGC<whatever>. I typed it in correctly and got a Page Not Found error. Why?

The website is hosted on a Linux server. Unlike MS-Windows, Linux filenames and directory names are case sensitive. In other words, in a single directory you can have one file named "index.htm", a second named "Index.htm", a third named "INDEX.HTM" and a fourth named "Index.HTM".

The filenames are lowercase and have no spaces. Instead of spaces, I use underscores. Also, I didn't put a separation between the catalog abbreviation and the number, i.e., NGC1502, not NGC_1502. (I don't know which is considered correct, so please don't e-mail me to ask.)

16) Do you have any other sites?

Lots! Here's a list of my sites.

17) How can I link to the site?

The HTML code for a text link is:
<A HREF="http://www.HubbleSpacePhotos.com">Description</A>

You don't need to request my permission. This is the only banner I have. It is 450x75 pixels.

18) How do the e-mail links work?

They activate a little javascript function designed to prevent spam robots from finding the e-mail address. The script can be put in the <head> portion of the HTML code or in a separate file:

Change the values of "var a" and "var b" to the target e-mail address.

To use the function:

	a)	Create a GIF image of the entire e-mail address line. In other words, if you want the line to read: E-mail me at MyName@MyDomain.com that is exactly what the image should look like. It is almost impossible to vertically line up real text with an image of text. If you don't include the "E-mail me at" part in the GIF, the result will be misaligned and will look sloppy and amateurish.
	b)	Insert the image in the page.
	c)	Create a hyperlink for the image. Set the link as: javascript:mail_it()

You can re-name the function, e.g., mail_me(). Actually, you don't need "var a" and "var b". Here is a simpler version:

Cautions: Make sure you have all the double-quotes correct or it won't work. The function name line uses parentheses but the rest uses curly braces, not parentheses.

If you want to have some fun, use a different color for the underline or for different parts of the address and let techie-wannabees go crazy trying to figure out how you got different parts in different colors (apparently) without using a graphic!

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