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View of a Mach 1000 Shock Wave

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Mach1000Shockwave
A photograph of the Tycho supernova remnant taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Low-energy X-rays (red) in the image show expanding debris from the supernova explosion and high energy X-rays (blue) show the blast wave, a shell of extremely energetic electrons.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/K. Eriksen et al.; Optical (starry background): DSS

 

This incredible image is of a remnant of the supernova Tycho, which blew up long ago. Supernova remnants are often able to be seen hundreds of years after the initial explosion because of a reverse shockwave that occurs.

This reverse shockwave is created when the outwardly ejected material of the supernova explosion creates sort of a backward current or backwash of material that heads inward at speeds up to mach 1000 or 1000 times the speed of sound. This material then begins to heat up to the point where it begins to emit X-rays, and that’s what you see here in the image above. This image is from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics where you can read more about this particular image.

We wouldn’t be able to study ancient supernova remnants without a reverse shock to light them up,” – Hiroya Yamaguchi

 

A Great Free Alternative to Photoshop

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Adobe Photoshop is an incredibly useful tool and it seems that the only limitation is your imagination. The only set back to using such powerful software could be it’s price tag.  The full version of Adobe Photoshop retails for $699 and if you want you can “rent” Photoshop for $19.99 per month but you must commit to a year long subscription or you will have to pay $29.99 per month. That’s a lot of money to throw down, especially for non-professional use, but there’s no need to fear, there are other options.

There is a really good alternative to Photoshop and it’s called GIMP which is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. GIMP offers up many of the same features as Photoshop and what’s even better is that it’s free!

GIMP Screenshot
GIMP UI

GIMP is loaded with features and you can export your images to many different file formats including TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, PSD and many more. What I have found to be one of the best features is the ability to download plugins. If there’s a feature or format that you need, you can usually always find a plugin to take care of your needs. You can perform many of the same common tasks that you would expect to find in any other modern image software, including photo retouching and enhancement, resizing/cropping, colorizing, filters and much more.

GIMP UI ScreenshotTwo
GIMP UI

Although most users will be able to jump right into it, those who are used to Photoshop may take a little while to get used to a different user interface. I use both Photoshop and GIMP but I do all of my work in GIMP on my laptop, including most of the photos you see on GeekwithEnvy. If you do get stuck or just want to learn more you can head over the the tutorials section to get up to speed.

GIMP is primarily written in C and was originally intended to to be a reasonably priced or Free image manipulation program for GNU/Linux and UNIX. Today, you can download the software for Mac OSX, Windows, Sun OpenSolaris, FreeBSD and of course GNU/Linux. For complete information you can head here.