Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Cassiopeia A

Cassiopeia A

Original - Three color X-ray image of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, the rightest astronomical radio source in the sky, taken at the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

File:Casa print4(crop).jpg

Alt. 1 Cropped out words.

File:Casa print4(clone).jpg

Alt. 2 Cloned out words.

Reason: High quality image of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant.
Articles this image appears in: Cassiopeia A
Creator: Chandra X-ray Observatory, NASA

Support as nominator --ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 00:33, 21 March 2009 (UTC) Support alt.2 Per issues pointed out by Shoemaker. This is definitely a better picture and the cloning out doesn't affect EV. ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 14:11, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: The words at the bottom of the image should be cropped out. Spencer^{T♦Nominate!} 01:24, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Looking at them, I have to agree with Shoemaker; the clone out looks better and more balanced. Spencer^{T♦Nominate!} 23:40, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - Could that be construed as a support? ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 14:05, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - Not yet...I'm checking out something else on the image, before I vote. Spencer^{T♦Nominate!} 01:55, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      - Clarify: I could've sworn that I saw a higher-res version somewhere, but I'm probably mistaken–it's probably the same as this. I just would like to check a bit further, though. Spencer^{T♦Nominate!} 02:11, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        I was unable to find one. Perhaps the one you saw was upsampled? ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 20:50, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        No, I was mistaken...the one I saw (I found it) is half this size. Spencer^{T♦Nominate!} 23:53, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Question: I'm not finding the nominated image at the given source, [1]. Can you be a little more specific as to where it is? (i.e.: The third image in "more images" or something like that). I'm not finding it anywhere. Spencer^{T♦Nominate!} 21:58, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- I've changed the description. This should make it a bit more clear as to where the picture can be found. Let me know if you are still confused and we could come up with something else. ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 20:48, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - Hm...I found it now. Perhaps an additional link to this would be better? That's where I actually found the full res one. Support interesting, great size. Spencer^{T♦Nominate!} 23:53, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment It'd look more balanced if they were cloned out instead. Cropping them out gives a very tight crop at the bottom. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 07:07, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support alt 2 Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 00:16, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Amazing image, and it makes me want to go read the article. However, the smallest features are about 8 pixels in diameter. This image could be resized to well under 1000 pixels without losing any information. NASA will have to buy a better camera before they can meet our "sufficiently high resolution" criteria. Wronkiew (talk) 05:14, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Not "sufficiently high resolution" criteria"? The picture is 6,000x4,800 pixels, which is well over the recommendedminimum resolution. Also, I couldn't quite follow your comment. You state that the image could be easily downsampled, then say it isn't of high enough resolution. Could you please elaborate? ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 20:48, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  I maintain that the image resolution is too low. I dug a little deeper and found that the Chandra X-ray Observatory has a resolution of 0.5 arcseconds. According to this, the image of Cassiopeia A covers 8 arcminutes. The original, cropped but unprocessed version of this image would have had a resolution of 960 x 768 pixels. If you zoom in on this candidate, you can see that the original pixels have been scaled and then smoothed, resulting in a gigantic but blurry image. Wronkiew (talk) 00:23, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In other words, it's upsampled. MER-C 06:22, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if this is state of the art, this is state of the art. I think that's an obvious exception to the "sufficiently high resolution" criteria. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 07:56, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would have to agree. I also think that that the upsampling was done well enough that it is better to have this upsampled version than a lower resolution image, as we can do more with it. ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 00:48, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's only state of the art for X-ray imaging. The image File:Cassiopeia A Spitzer.jpg, for example, combines X-ray and infrared data with a high-resolution Hubble image. It's not as shocking, but it shows more detail. Wronkiew (talk) 06:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not promoted MER-C 02:45, 28 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]