Cosmos, 2014 Edition, starring the multiverse and Neil deGrasse Tyson

I like that he brought out the fact that most of the pictures on this show can't be seen with the naked eye. Very few people want to talk about how all the false color/expanded spectrum images out there give a very different picture of what it would actually look like out there.

Even the "black" of space isn't actually black by the true definition of the world. It's just a limitation on what we can photograph/detect and portray on any media we have. We have no way of portraying the true absence of space with obstructive techniques like film or photographs, or additive methods like painting.

I'll stop now. I geeked rhapsodic about this once, and I won't bore you with it.

EDIT: That was fast. FOX took it down while I was watching it. I'll have to get up on Hulu or something and watch the rest.

momgamer wrote:

I like that he brought out the fact that most of the pictures on this show can't be seen with the naked eye. Very few people want to talk about how all the false color/expanded spectrum images out there give a very different picture of what it would actually look like out there.

Even the "black" of space isn't actually black by the true definition of the world. It's just a limitation on what we can photograph/detect and portray on any media we have. We have no way of portraying the true absence of space with obstructive techniques like film or photographs, or additive methods like painting.

I'll stop now. I geeked rhapsodic about this once, and I won't bore you with it.

EDIT: That was fast. FOX took it down while I was watching it. I'll have to get up on Hulu or something and watch the rest.

Surprised it took them that long, actually; the Hulu link is in the OP

Tanglebones wrote:

Surprised it took them that long, actually; the Hulu link is in the OP

I watched it live on Fox, but I just tried to watch it on Hulu.com (I don't have Hulu+), and it was laggy as hell, even when I lowered the quality setting. Frustrating.

I watched it for the second time last night. My wife and I went to the world premier which was simulcast to a number of planetariums and science centers across the country.

Last night, we watched it again with my mom and my in-laws. It was even better a second time. I wasn't so focused on the content and could just soak up the splendor. Amazing music and visuals.

I was starting to get really angry at the commercials. Not because there were commercials, but because my mother-in-law kept starting conversations during them that she would try to carry over into the show. I think I may have angered her when I shushed her as they came back from commercial to the cosmic calendar.

I have a feeling the animated segments will age a lot better than the shoestring budget historical reenactments from the original series. Overall a really great start. If it gets better and more focused as the series goes along (in the same way the original Cosmos series did!) we're in for a treat.

I was moved to dig out my old giant Cosmos book; I'll set it out somewhere the little boy might find it.

The show's made me doubly grateful from a wonderful gift from Edwin and Clover. I owned a copy of the book of the original series as a gift from my real father. It was really special to me. I'd lost it in a house-fire in college. I'd mentioned I was looking for a copy, and they found me one and got it for me.

momgamer wrote:

The show's made me doubly grateful from a wonderful gift from Edwin and Clover. I owned a copy of the book of the original series as a gift from my real father. It was really special to me. I'd lost it in a house-fire in college. I'd mentioned I was looking for a copy, and they found me one and got it for me.

Awesome!

I loved Cosmos, and look forward to being able to watch the new ones.

momgamer wrote:

I like that he brought out the fact that most of the pictures on this show can't be seen with the naked eye. Very few people want to talk about how all the false color/expanded spectrum images out there give a very different picture of what it would actually look like out there.

Even the "black" of space isn't actually black by the true definition of the world. It's just a limitation on what we can photograph/detect and portray on any media we have. We have no way of portraying the true absence of space with obstructive techniques like film or photographs, or additive methods like painting.

I liked this too and it's something that I've always wondered about when you see images from the telescopes which are composite images of the various spectrums (spectra?) we're able to "see" with technology. Following on from that, I'd love to know who decides which colors map to what values. I remember working on a fractal rendering program for a class having a hard time trying to choose color palettes that looked appealing, so I'm jealous of anyone who has the right eye for picking out the colors on the images from Hubble and its family.

EDIT: I also liked the brief mention of rogue planets since that's something I believe I've heard about before but never really thought much of.

As if rogue waves are not creepy enough, rogue planets? Man that looked really evil.

fangblackbone wrote:

As if rogue waves are not creepy enough, rogue planets? Man that looked really evil.

Ancient evils await.

*whispers* Miranda *whispers*

shoptroll wrote:
momgamer wrote:

I like that he brought out the fact that most of the pictures on this show can't be seen with the naked eye. Very few people want to talk about how all the false color/expanded spectrum images out there give a very different picture of what it would actually look like out there.

Even the "black" of space isn't actually black by the true definition of the world. It's just a limitation on what we can photograph/detect and portray on any media we have. We have no way of portraying the true absence of space with obstructive techniques like film or photographs, or additive methods like painting.

I liked this too and it's something that I've always wondered about when you see images from the telescopes which are composite images of the various spectrums (spectra?) we're able to "see" with technology. Following on from that, I'd love to know who decides which colors map to what values. I remember working on a fractal rendering program for a class having a hard time trying to choose color palettes that looked appealing, so I'm jealous of anyone who has the right eye for picking out the colors on the images from Hubble and its family.

EDIT: I also liked the brief mention of rogue planets since that's something I believe I've heard about before but never really thought much of.

It's mostly individual style. There's no standard I'm aware of. It's chosen by the person doing the image processing to provide the best visual contrast with whatever wavelengths they took the image with and what they're actually trying to see. Here's a decent discussion of the issue with false color images.

If you're getting the image from the source, it will sometimes have what wavelengths correspond to what in it's accompanying data. But anyone using the data rarely brings that along. When I wrote my piece, it was because I'd watched the "making of" video for Titan A.E., and the artists had gone on about how they'd used the heavily false-color images from the Hubble to drive the visual style of the film. They thought it was accurate.

IMAGE(http://i641.photobucket.com/albums/uu132/yanguchitzure/Angel/rogue-demon-hunter.jpg)

What's a Rogue demon? -Cordelia

I loved the reboot, they did a great job updating Cosmos. I can't wait to see the rest of the season. I wonder what the odds of getting a second season of Cosmos are.

That mars rover shot was awesome.

Full episode also available here: http://www.cosmosontv.com/

(via this tweet from NdGT: Neil deGrasse Tyson ‏@neiltyson 15m
For those who don’t remember when they last saw a TV show on a TV: The full COSMOS premiere on line: http://bit.ly/1hFYJGU )

May just be a front end for Hulu delivery, but if not, maybe you'll get better streaming there.

That was great! Neil deGrasse Tyson's personality can sometimes rub me the wrong way on Star Talk, but he was fantastic as a host and narrator for the show. I'm excited to see more episodes.

HEY GUYS, SPOILERS!

Spoiler:

;')

Tanglebones wrote:

IMAGE(http://media.giphy.com/media/JZOsTRDdxKJBm/giphy.gif)

Doogiemac mentioned it on Twitter, but the second I saw that I thought, 'Illusive man?'

I was pretty struck by the full zoom out of the universe, and how it looked like it had a structure to it, kind of like a sponge or a metal foam. I swear somebody's told me about that before, but I don't think I've ever seen it illustrated.

Foreigners might be interested in this.

and how it looked like it had a structure to it, kind of like a sponge or a metal foam.

That's actually one of the deeper questions they're wondering about: why it looks like that, and isn't more uniform. IIRC, they think it may be related somehow to the disappearance of antimatter.

I really liked it. I am hoping that they get more into how science has arrived at some of the conclusions that he was throwing out in this episode. My wife kept asking me "how do they know that", and I didn't have a good answer on several of the questions. I'm assuming that, like Planet Earth, this first episode was more of a big picture overview of things, and the later episodes will dive into individual subjects in greater details, and cover the science behind things.

Spoiler:

The bit at the end, where he talked about Sagan, and showed the calendar? Yeah, that made with the feels.

Out of curiosity. Has there been any reaction to this by religious conservatives?

I certainly don't want to turn this into a P&C conversation but I'm curious.

Edit: FOX took the YouTube video of the show down, as is their wont.

Watched the first half during lunch. I have a sneaking suspicion I'm about to head into "every misconception about Galileo you've ever wanted to perpetuate and more" territory. I'm hoping I'm wrong.

I took some time during my workday and watched it with the kids as a homeschool opportunity for them.

The 13-year-old tuned out a bit during the planets, scale of the universe, and scale of time parts. I figured she would, since I tend to wax eloquent on those topics during science discussions. The 10 and 7-year-old were transfixed throughout.

Spoiler:

During the segment about Giordano Bruno all three of them turned toward me with questions on their faces when he was imprisoned and tortured, and once more when he was killed. Both times I just nodded sadly and said, "It's true." The show made a semi-accurate portrayal of Bruno, and was most correct in saying that he wasn't a man who you can categorize easily. The trial scene touched on why he really was persecuted and put to death, which had nothing to do with holding to Copernican theory or an infinite universe. Still, he was imprisoned, tortured, and killed for spreading ideas which were contrary to church doctrine. In general that was true.

Overall I think it's a near perfect first episode. To have a show about the cosmos you need to explain what the cosmos is, and they did that along with explaining the show itself and its perspective.

MrDeVil909 wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

IMAGE(http://media.giphy.com/media/JZOsTRDdxKJBm/giphy.gif)

Doogiemac mentioned it on Twitter, but the second I saw that I thought, 'Illusive man?'

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that during the broadcast.

I'll confess that at least half of the fun of the new Cosmos, for me, is watching the christianists/cryptonauts try to respond to it: http://thinkchristian.reframemedia.c... (warning: myopic trash)

My hope and expectation is that, as the series continues, it leaves less and less wiggle room for that kind of reaction. I wonder if a similar thing happened with the original series. Cosmos is a slow burn.

chairkicker wrote:

I'll confess that at least half of the fun of the new Cosmos, for me, is watching the christianists/cryptonauts try to respond to it: http://thinkchristian.reframemedia.c... (warning: myopic trash)

My hope and expectation is that, as the series continues, it leaves less and less wiggle room for that kind of reaction. I wonder if a similar thing happened with the original series. Cosmos is a slow burn.

EDIT: Never mind and carry on.