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Above is an image captured from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope. The image shows the Cocoon nebula, also called IC 5146, which is located approximately 4,000 light years away from Earth. The Cocoon Nebula is a reflection/emission nebula and extends over 45 light-years across. A reflection nebula simply reflects light from nearby stars, An emission nebula is simply one that is being heated up from stars within its interior, and emitting light in various colors. Within the Cocoon nebula, new stars are being formed. Not shown in this image is Barnard 168 dark nebula. This is a dark cloud of dust and gas that is not emitting or reflecting light. The Barnard 168 dark nebula appears to trail behind the Cocoon Nebula.

The WISE space-born telescope has a 16 inch diameter and surveys light in the infrared wavelengths. The telescope is running out of the frozen coolant needed to keep it cool it to view the universe in the infrared wavelength. Currently the longest-wavelength infrared sensor on WISE has stopped producing useful data.

The colors used in this image represent specific wavelengths of infrared light. Blue and cyan represent light emitted at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is predominantly from stars. Green and red represent light from 12 and 22 microns, respectively, which is mostly emitted by dust.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

via Cocoon Nebula.

Science astronomy, nasa, wise

Rumor has it that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 will be coming out soon. This card will likely have all 512 streaming processors enabled, and be using the GF110 chip. A User over in the [H]ard|OCP forum found a web page that NVIDIA put up themselves describing the system requirement for 3-D Vision. On that web page, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 was listed as one of the cards capable of supporting 3-D Vision. Of course, NVIDIA has taken down any mention of the GTX 580 now. A screen shot was taken, which you see above. Check out the link below for the full screen shot.

When will we likely see the GTX 580 come out? Well, we know that AMD just released a new series of graphics cards today for the mid range segment of the gaming population. The Radeon HD 6870 and 6850 are based on the Northern Island series, and specifically the Bart GPU. Next month AMD will be releasing the Cayman series GPUs as the 6900 series of graphics cards for the high end segment of the gaming population. I fully expect to see the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 in late November or early December. The real question is how will it compare to the Radeon HD 6900 series in performance and price.

via [H]ard|Forum – View Single Post – GTX 580 rumors.

Hardware nvidia

We have not heard a lot out of AMD regarding their 3-D display technology in recent weeks. However, with the release of the AMD Radeon HD 6870 and the Radeon HD 6850, AMD has updated their website with more information. Currently the 5000 series and 6000 series of graphics cards from AMD supports what AMD is calling its HD3D Technology. However, only the latest graphics cards, the Radeon HD 6870 and 6850, support GPU-accelerated 3-D Blu-Ray. Therefore, if you really want that, you should go with the latest graphics cards.

Anton over at the 3-D Vision Blog has more information on the HD3D Technology.

One important thing again related to the new Radeon HD 6850/6870 GPUs is the fact that they do come with DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4a connectors that both do support stereoscopic 3D output. Of course we are yet to see some 120Hz LCD monitors that do use DisplayPort, however the availability of HDMI 1.4a ensures compatibility with all the 3D-capable consumer hardware such as 3D HDTVs already available and the upcoming 3D home cinema projectors with the same interface. So the new GPUs do have support for HDMI 1.4a and the frame packing specifications used for stereo 3D content distribution over the interface, however you still need to have something to provide the 3D content, so you still need the iZ3D Driver or TriDef’s Ignition software to convert games for example, or a software Blu-ray 3D player to output the movie.

via AMD With New 6800 series GPUs and the AMD HD3D Technology @ 3D Vision Blog

Hardware 3d, amd, hd3d, radeon

Today sees the release of the AMD Radeon HD 6870 and the Radeon HD 6850. If you remember, AMD beat their rival NVIDIA to the marker with new DirectX11 cards by some 6 months with the Radeon HD 5000 series. Meanwhile, NVIDIA worked on getting out their Fermi series of graphics cards, which arrived earlier this year. This finally brought some competition back into the marketplace, which is always welcome.

Meanwhile, AMD’s engineers have not been idle. Originally they planned to launch the Radeon HD 6870 and the Radeon HD 6850 on TSMC’s 32nm process. However, TSMC decided to skip the 32 nm process, and went with the 28nm process instead. AMD then had to redo their designs for the 40nm process instead.

What this means is that this is a derivative chip series. The Radeon HD 5000 series was based on the Cypress chip family. This series is based on the Northern Island chip series, which is a derivative of the Cypress family. The specific GPU that is being used in the Radeon HD 5000 series is called the Bart GPU.

With this GPU, AMD is focusing on a lower level of price and performance. Designing, manufacturing, and selling the fastest graphics card is great, but not many people buy the high end cards. More people buy the mid level to lower end cards, and that is where the money is. The Radeon HD 6800 series has a lower performance than the previous Radeon HD 5800 series. However, it is also significantly less expensive.

AMD will continue manufacturing and selling the Radeon HD 5700 series. However, AMD will stop manufacturing the AMD HD 5800 series. The available stock of these cards is expected to last through the end of the year. Instead, AMD will focus on the Radeon 6800 series.

The Radeon HD 6870 has 1120 stream processors running at 900 MHz, 56 texture units, 32 ROPs, and a memory clock running at 1.05 GHz. The memory bus is 256 bits wide. The graphics card comes with 1 GB of memory. At full load the card consumes about 151 watts. At idle it consumes about 19 watts, which is just fantastic. The price for the card is $239.

At this price point, the Radeon HD 6870 is competing against the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 with 1 GB of memory. Depending on the game and settings, the Radeon HD 6870 either slightly beats or slightly lags the GTX 470.

The Radeon HD 6850 has 960 stream processors running at 775 MHz, 48 texture units, 32 ROPs, and a memory clock running at 1.0 GHz. The memory bus is 256 bits wide. The graphics card comes with 1 GB of memory. At full load the card consumes about 127 watts. At idle it consumes about 19 watts. The price for the card is $179.

At this price point, the Radeon HD 6850 is competing against the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 with 1 GB of memory. Depending on the game and settings, and whether or not an overclocked 460 is the competition, the Radeon HD 6850 either slightly beats or slightly lags the GTX 460.

Below we have collected some links for you with reviews of the new AMD Radeon HD 6870 and 6850 graphics cards.

Science amd, nvidia, radeon

One trillion dollars sounds like a whole lot of money, and that’s because it is, as we can see on Credit Loan‘s infographic. Get Satisfaction shows us the shopping habits of the Generation Y with the graphic produced by Column Five Media, and the folks at Pixelcomics breakdown the Gap new logo social media impact. To finish this week’s last round-up, we bring the Evolution of the Geek, by Flowtown and the EBay’s retrospective, also made by Column Five Media.

Read more…

Graphics, Science design, economy, environment, infographic, infoviz, Visual Loop, visualizations

Rumor has it that tomorrow AMD will be releasing the new AMD Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850. You can expect to see a plethora of reviews on the new cards tomorrow morning. Rumor also has it that these cards will be faster than the current GeForce GTX 460 and GeForce GTX 470. Currently you can get a 768 GB GeForce GTX 460 for $160 at NewEgg. When you throw in the $20 mail in rebate (I really hate those), the price drops to $140. That is the one thing that I love about competition: lower prices.

Hardware amd, nvidia

Earlier today we told you about NVIDIA’s 3DTV Play. In case you want to know more about, you can check out the above video and their blog post.

Today we announced the availability of 3DTV Play software bundled with Dell’s XPS 14, 15 & 17 notebooks, making it easier than ever to connect your GeForce-based notebook to an HDMI 1.4 3D TV. 3DTV Play lets you play nearly 500 3D games, view 3D photographs and watch 3D video files on your 3D TV. Today we announced the availability of 3DTV Play software bundled with Dell’s XPS 14, 15 & 17 notebooks, making it easier than ever to connect your GeForce-based notebook to an HDMI 1.4 3D TV. 3DTV Play lets you play nearly 500 3D games, view 3D photographs and watch 3D video files on your 3D TV.

via : NVIDIA 3DTV Play Now Available on Dell Notebooks and for 3D Vision Owners

Hardware nvidia

Rastergrid is back with more details for their OpenGL4.0 Mountains demo, this time time they update the occlusion culling algorithm to utilitize the Hierarchical-Z buffer technology in new OpenGL4.0 spec.

Occlusion culling is a visibility determination algorithm that is used to identify those objects that did reside in the view volume but still aren’t visible on the screen due to occlusion. That means they are hidden by such objects that reside closer to the camera.

via Hierarchical-Z map based occlusion culling « RasterGrid Blog.

Science demo, opengl

Several years ago I bought a cool Dell XPS laptop with all the bells and whistles. It had the fastest processor, the best graphics card, flashy LED lights that you could customize, and a cool XPS backpack to carry the laptop in. It was excellent. I was going to use it for OpenGL development. However, since it was a work laptop, and since I work at a federal lab, the Security team imposed all kinds of restrictions. The worst restriction was that I could not have a debugger on the system, since I might attach it to a running kernel and receive “elevated privileges” . That effectively meant that I could not compile any code on the system, which really relegated the laptop to a 12 pound brick. The 10lb backpack was ditched quickly, and the brick laptop was stowed in my suitcase.

In the meantime, Dell let the XPS brand fade away, which is a shame really. The XPS laptop was great; it was the security policies that stunk. With no XPS laptop to choose from, I recently bought a 4.8 pound ASUS UL80 laptop.

Dell has announced today that it is reviving the XPS brand with the launch of three new models. Since the XPS brand means performance, these models come with all the bells and whistles, including an NVIDIA 400M GPU with 1GB of memory. NVIDIA has also bundled its new 3DTV Play software bundled with the laptops, which of course have an HDMI 1.4 output port. AnandTech gives you all the details.

To coincide with the return of the XPS brand, Dell is shipping three new laptops as of today. In a sense, these three laptops replace the old Studio XPS offerings with updated features and performance, and they all look very nice. The three new models all have the same basic features, with size being a major differentiator; you can choose between 14″, 15.6″, or 17.3″ (L401x, L501x, or L701x respectively), and in all cases you should get a high quality, good performance laptop.

via Dell XPS Laptops: Back to the Future @ AnandTech

Hardware 3d, dell, laptop

Back in 2004, ESO astronomers using the ISAAC near-infrared instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) claimed that they had found a galaxy with a redshift of 10, equating to a time of when the universe was just 470 million years old. It turns out that no one else could find the galaxy.

Today, ESO astronomers using the VLT have claimed that they have found a galaxy with a redshift of 8.6, equating to a time of when the universe was just 600 million years old. This claim has been verified by observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. If the current theory of how the Universe was formed is true, then at this early time the Universe was still filled with a hydrogen fog that rendered it opaque to light. If the Universe was opaque at that time, how can we see the light of this galaxy? Although not yet found, there are probably other nearby galaxies that helped to clear out the local area of the hydrogen fog to allow this light to shine through.

Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have measured the distance to the most remote galaxy so far, UDFy-38135539, which we see as it was when the Universe was only about 600 million years old (a redshift of 8.6). This video uses images from the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field to visualise a zoom towards UDFy-38135539.

Credit: A. M. Swinbank and S. Zieleniewski, Music: movetwo

via : Clearing the Cosmic Fog

Science astronomy, eso