Space nebulae brought to life in 3D. Wow. Simply Wow.

You know the problem with a lot of astronomy? Apart from things that happen in our own Solar System, most of the rest of what we view through our cameras and telescopes never changes.

And given that astronomical timescales make human lifespans seem like relative nanoseconds, it just isn't likely to change much either.

We get stunning beautiful pictures like this one of IC1396. (And you do need to click on it to get the full beauty...)

But - you look at it, marvel a bit - or a lot - and that's it.

Well that is now about to change. J-P Metsävainio in Finland has developed a process to convert high resolution photos of nebulae into Lenticular prints, presented as GIFs. He describes how here:

I have tested a new method to publish my 3D-images as a form of Lenticular prints.
For this technique to work, I need series of images from different angles, in this case 24 images are needed.
Lenticular printing is actually an old technique but in past few years it has become much more sophisticated.
The results can be stunning visually, image plane disappears and object floats in and outside of the frame.
Since astronomical objects are too far away, no real parallax can be imaged. [To do] that, I have developed a method to turn my images to various 3D-formats. My work flow is based on scientific data from the object, distance and the source of ionization are usually known. The different types of the nebulae [have] typical structures, pillar like formations must point to the source of ionization, the radiation pressure forms [a] kind of hollow area, inside of the nebula, around newly born stars, dark nebulae must be at front of the emission ones to show, etc... rest of the missing information is then replaced with an artistic vision.
The whole process is pretty much like sculpting! 

What comes out the end of this is simply mesmerising. Here are a few of them. But you do need to allow time for them to completely load. They are several megabytes each. When all 24 frames are loaded it will pan smoothly. So patience Grasshopper...

IC1396 Source: http://astroanarchy.blogspot.fr/search/label/animations

You can clearly see how the nebula is a balloon of dust with a hollow core and a bright new star in the centre.

This it the Veil Nebula, obviously in a very busy part of our sky:

Not content with short GIF files, J-P is pushing it further with 3D flythroughs:



There is so much potential for this method to really bring astronomy - and astrophotography - to life, making it all the more accessible to the general public, and perhaps more easily analysed and interpreted by scientists.

Don't stop with these couple of examples. Head over to his website to see more. And bookmark it or add it to your RSS list, because we are going to want to keep an eye on this work as it develops...