Digital Gadgets

A huge but very faint structure, containing hundreds of thousands of stars spread over an area nearly 5,000 times the size of a full moon, has been discovered and mapped by astronomers of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-II).

At an estimated distance of 30,000 light years (10 kiloparsecs) from Earth, the structure lies well within the confines of the Milky Way Galaxy. However, it does not follow any of Milky Way’s three main components: a flattened disk of stars in which the sun resides, a bulge of stars at the center of the Galaxy and an extended, roughly spherical, stellar halo. Instead, the researchers believe that the most likely interpretation of the new structure is a dwarf galaxy that is merging into the Milky Way.

The new dwarf galaxy is found toward the constellation Virgo. “Some of the stars in this Milky Way companion have been seen with telescopes for centuries,’” explained Princeton University graduate student Mario Juric, principal author of the findings describing what may well be our closest galactic neighbor. “But because the galaxy is so close, its stars are spread over a huge swath of the sky, and they always used to be lost in the sea of more numerous Milky Way stars. This galaxy is so big, we couldn’t see it before.”

More: spaceref.com

The sturdy, solid, 8-megapixel PowerShot S80 is the update to the PowerShot S70, last year’s Editor’s Choice winner. The camera is pricey ($549.95 list), but most features are improved, and only a couple have been dropped. As such, the S80 becomes our Editor’s Choice for full-featured, compact digital cameras.

The S80 weighs just 7.9 ounces but comes loaded with features. The 3.6X optical, 5.8- to 20mm zoom lens (35mm equivalent: 28- to 100mm) has a maximum f/stop range of f/2.8 to f/5.3 across the zoom range. We love the 28mm wide-angle view (which the S70 also had)—it’s great for capturing large slices of an interior or outdoor landscape.

The flash worked pretty well in most situations, but sometimes missed the mark, either being too powerful or not powerful enough. Fortunately, you can change the settings to increase or decrease illumination. The S80 offers additional flash features, such as a second curtain strobe, which fires right before the shutter closes, instead of just after it opens. This can produce some really creative shots, where long streaks of light or sections of blurring add a sense of motion and movement to your stills.

More: abcnews.go.com

Canon’s EOS 350D/Rebel XT has been reviewed at Shutterbug and they write: “One drawback to the camera, and this being more from being spoiled by others, is the LCD display. In low light and shade the 1.8âPound Sterling ? 115,000 pixel screen is visible, but in sunlight the comparatively small screen is fairly unreadable due to surface reflection.

ItâPound Sterling ™s good that you can set many functions using the manual toggles and LCD panel rather than the monitor, as using the monitor for setting menus and reviewing images after exposure in any kind of direct sunlight is very difficult. Pushing the ISO setting toggle, for example, opens the ISO menu on the monitor, again difficult to see in bright light. The display does have helpful information, such as overexposure warnings in image review.”

More: digitalcameratracker.com

Kodak chief executive Antonio Perez called on his peers in the industry to break with the tradition of designing standalone devices that lock in content.

Such proprietary technologies only confuse consumers, he asserted during a speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

“Digital products and services should not require our customers to be engineers or professional photographers, but should inspire them to be artists and publishers as they capture the moments of their lives, as they see them, with intuitive ease,” he said.

More: computeractive.co.uk