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Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Milky Way 2005

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Milky Way 2005

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A NASA artist's conception of what the Milky Way would look like if seen from its axis.

This image was created by NASA and taken from a NASA website or publication. NASA copyright policy notes that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". This is used in the Milky Way article and as the "galaxy stub" image. IMO a really great uncopyrighted image of the Milky Way, quite large and clear, illustrates what its article is about, and comes from a fairly reliable source.

  • Nominate and support. - Procrastinator-General 21:10, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose (until licence clarified). It's not at all clear that it is public domain. The image credit is NASA/JPL-caltech (SSC). SSC is the "Spitzer Science Center", which is part of Caltech. If the image comes from a contract that's solely funded by the US Government, then the image is PD - but if it comes from a project that's jointly funded by another body (such as Caltech) then it isn't. We need to find out which of these pertains in this case. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:31, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support provided the licence is okay.--Lewk_of_Serthic contrib talk 00:00, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Striking image that is both detailed and clear (as an artist's drawing of natural phenomena should be, I suppose). Useful in a number of capacities. bcasterline t 02:30, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support great image, so long as that license holds. Staxringold 03:02, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Merely an artist's CG guess at what it may look like. I don't find it particularly special. There are far more striking REAL astronomical images.--Deglr6328 05:48, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose As above. I prefer real astrophotos over artist's conceptions. We don't have any photo of the Milky Way, so this image is just an approximation based on other data, not a true, factual image. Also, it looks a bit too symmetrical, and the central bar is "cleaner" than in real photos of other galaxies. --Janke | Talk 06:46, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support I think we do need artists conceptions, and we should respect a good artists conception. --Fir0002 www 10:28, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I can't find the little red dot that says "You are here". Pengo 12:01, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Another comment: Spending a few moments on Google Images, I found several artist's conceptions that I feel are graphically more striking than this straight-ahead "mug shot" (some even with the "You are here" dot... ;-) : [1], [2], [3], [4], but alas, they are not free licence nor large enough. --Janke | Talk 15:54, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as per Deglr6328 above. There are artist conceptions much more stunning than this. --P199 21:18, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose See no need for an "artist's conception." Fake looking, ugly. Plenty of real photos of spiral galaxies (obviously not ours) look better to me. –Joke 21:25, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose An "artist's conception" is merely an artist's conception - is there anything here that is actually based on the appearance of our galaxy? Agree with User:Joke137, not appealing even as "art", and not as illustrative as if it were 3-dimensional. User:Tejastheory 206.110.185.23 00:38, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • The text suggests that the image (referring to the version with the Sun pointed out) isn't a random drawing: "This artist's rendering shows a view of our own Milky Way Galaxy and its central bar as it might appear if viewed from above. An arrow indicates the location of our Sun. Astronomers have concluded for many years that our galaxy harbors a stellar bar, though its presence has been inferred indirectly. Our vantage point within the disk of the galaxy makes it difficult to accurately determine the size and shape of this bar and surrounding spiral arms. New observations by the GLIMPSE legacy team with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope indicate that the bar-shaped collection of old stars at the center of our galaxy may be longer, and at a different orientation, than previously believed. The newly-deduced size and angle of the bar are shown relative to our Sun's location. Our Milky Way galaxy may appear to be very different from an ordinary spiral galaxy." Procrastinator-General
  • Our Milky Way galaxy may appear to be very different from an ordinary spiral galaxy - that seems to go a bit against the cosmological principle - of course the Milky Way looks different to us, were inside it, with no hope of getting a true outside view... ;-) --Janke | Talk 06:06, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think that appear is used as a synonym of 'seems' in the way of "he appears to be smarter than we thought" or something like that. Procrastinator-General
  • Oppose As an astronomer I agree with the opposing arguments already brought forward. Roger McLassus 15:09, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Very detailed image Leidiot 03:16, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support An artist's conception is the most humans are ever going to have (barring light-speed travel). And although I don't have anything in particular to support this, I don't think that NASA would publish something like this unless the "conception" is based on facts about the galaxy. I doubt that the artist just whipped this up out of his imagination; I would suspect that this conception is based on what we know the galaxy might look like. Dylan 20:31, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment re accuracy Here's another, completely different artist's impression, also from NASA [5]. The dense galactic centre completely blocks our view of a large chunk of the galaxy and some sources indicate the guessed area (I'm looking at the excellent artists' impressions in October's Scientific American right now). The creators of this pic state openly that Our vantage point within the disk of the galaxy makes it difficult to accurately determine the size and shape of this bar and surrounding spiral arms[6]. This nomination is attractive but I'm not sure we should choose it over drawings of other galaxies that we can depict with much greater certainty. It's a pity the ones in Sciam are copyrighted :-) ~ Veledan • Talk 18:07, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose We've all seen a million of these images, and this one is not particularly stunning. It's a bit "ho hum". If it was a Wikipedian who had made it, that might be interesting, but it doesn't have any particular context, timeliness, new techniques or whatever to make it particularly remarkable. Stevage 13:04, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. bored. pschemp | talk 06:10, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Valuable image for an encyclopedia - even if it is just presenting one way the Milky Way could look like from that position. Mikeo 14:28, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not promoted --PS2pcGAMER (talk) 18:20, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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