January 11, 2010

The Universe in 3-D

Greg Smye-Rumsby

Report by: Mike Dryland

Greg has been delivering this super presentation for a couple of years now, including his appearance at AstroFest in 2009. His engagement at the Flamsteed, one of his local societies, was long overdue.

Some members had braced themselves for a challenging bout of string theory — “Three dimensions? I thought you needed 22!” — so Greg’s outstanding gallop around the Universe in three dimensional stereoscopic images came as a very welcome surprise.

Greg has developed a splendid collection of stereoscopic astronomical images, many of which he has created himself using ‘SSSR’ in Photoshop to simulate 3-D. Of course, there are no true ‘3-D’ astronomical images based on the 60mm separation of the human eyeball Mk I. Even ‘true’ 3-D has been generated by progressive images typically shot from a moving spacecraft where the stereo separation is much, much greater.

An excellent evening!

Pictures from the evening [by Mike Dear]:

Greg Smye-Rumsby	Greg Smye-Rumsby
The Flamsteed audience getting ready to enjoy Greg’s images — More world-class faffing about from the Flamsteed!	Eddie tooled-up for 3-D action
“Now if we imagine the Universe to be the size of this chocolate biscuit …” Is Roger preparing a Flamsteed talk?