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James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live

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Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live

#221

Post by racingmars »

jcims wrote: post #205
pwned1 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My god, look at the background of the first image at full scale.

I really wish astronomers would come up (or use) a standard mechanism for indicating the field of view of an image. The scale of this one in the night sky is much larger than the deep field one.

The image details do have the dimensions listed in a standard measure down under the "Fast Facts" section; I assume this will be included for every image release.

The deep field image says it's about 2.4 arcmin across[1], Stephan's Quintet image is about 7.4 arcmin across[2], etc.

[1] https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/035/01G... [2] https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/034/01G...

Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live

#222

Post by bcherry »

rootusrootus wrote: post #104
chaps wrote: post #64

Direct links -- Stephan's Quintet (NIRCam and MIRI Composite Image): https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G7DB1FHPMJCCY59CQGZC1YJQ.png Southern Ring Nebula (NIRCam and MIRI Images Side by Side): https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G79R28V7S4AXDN8NG5QCPGE3.png “Cosmic Cliffs” in the Carina Nebula (NIRCam Image): https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G7ETPF7DVBJAC42JR5N6EQRH.png Webb's First Deep Field (NIRCam Image): https://stsci-opo.org…

Thanks for the direct links! > Webb's First Deep Field (NIRCam Image) Is this image distorted in any way at all? It feels like the galaxies are somehow oriented around a center spot. Not all of them, but enough to give the image a distorted feeling. Probably it's just my mind pattern matching against something that doesn't really exist.

Something missing from this discussion that's worth pointing out:

This image shows profound "gravitational lensing", which you know. But what you might not know is that is precisely _why_ they chose to photograph it.

This galaxy cluster (SMACS 0723) may be the most well known and powerful gravitational lens we have observed. The galaxies shown distorted around the edges are actually behind the lens, but are magnified by it. This means we can see even farther in this region of space than normal, because we compound the power of the JWST with the power of this natural lens.

It all adds up to providing the "deepest" view of the universe yet, allowing us to see galaxies at a distance of more than 13.2B lightyears. This lets us see structures formed in the infancy of the universe, that wouldn't be possible looking at most other points in the sky, or even anywhere else in this deep field besides the perimeter of the lens in the middle.

Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live

#223

Post by deanCommie »

alberth wrote: post #32

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t most astronomy photos colorized (and not actually such vivid colors in real life).

What is real life? What are vivid colors?

All electromagnetic radiation is the same. In the sense that every proton/neutron is the same. But adding a few more protons/neutrons creates an entirely new element, with entirely new chemical properties. From something simple come incredibly new powerful behaviours. So just as Iron is massively different from Plutonium, Microwaves are massively different from Gamma rays.

What we call "colors", or "visible light" is not particularly special, except to us, and our specific human biology. It feels more real because it's visible to us, but it's not on the grand scale of the universe.

What we're observing through these telescopes isn't a dog chasing a ball. We're seeing stuff billions of light years away, millions of light years in size, billions of years ago. Passing by trillions of other stars and planets on the way.

These objects are emitting a gargantuan amount of information. Why should we only present the information that happens to be in the same subset as what our primitive primate vision cones can process?

So, no, if you were to teleport to the nebula/galaxy that we're showing images for, it wouldn't look exactly like that to your human eyes. Instead, what you're seeing is what a god with perfect vision of the universe would see. You're seeing the universe for what it is, not just the part of it that is presented to humans.

Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live

#224

Post by pqdbr »

perlgeek wrote: post #206
peanut_worm wrote: post #202

Other than the big bright ones (which I guess are nearby stars) are all these things different galaxies?

Yes. This was an image of a relatively "empty" portion of sky (no stars nearby), so anything you can see has to be pretty bright by itself, which means galaxy, not star.

Does that also include the very tiny little dots? I have the same question as OP, and I thought the tiny dots were single stars, and the little bigger ones (brighter) were galaxies.

Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live

#225

Post by sixstringtheory »

datadata wrote: post #103

When I was observing the 2017 total solar eclipse, my attention was interrupted for a few seconds by someone who was driving a car. Their headlights turned on as they kept driving, not stopping for a minute to see something that for a given place on earth happens once every four centuries. The few people dismissing this reminded me of that experience.

I know people who care greatly about the JWST but will go around the company slack belittling people for wishing happy new year, wielding a cosmic cudgel of unimportance on the day.

But everything humans find important are only that due to human and sociological constructs, whether calendrical or cosmological. Nothing matters, except what matters to you. The unthinking matter of nature is utterly indifferent (as far as we know or think).

– someone who drove a long, long way to see the same solar eclipse, no regrets!

Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live

#226

Post by loudmax »

mike10921 wrote: post #53
crhulls wrote: post #15

Here is a Hubble side by side of the deep field for comparison https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10159217085846758&se...

Ok to be honest I know it's not cool to admit it, but so far it all looks the same. If someone told me that the Webb picture was taken by Hubble I would not have thought about it for an extra second. I'm hoping that in the future we see pictures of locations and environments that are mind-blowing to the average person who loves space.

I kind of agree with you, these pictures do look like more of the same. But that's okay, the real exciting stuff isn't going to be pretty pictures, it's going to be what astronomers and physicists are able to learn by peering deep into the origins of the universe. The pictures of galaxies are nice to look at, but the real ramifications of JWST will take years to play out.

Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live

#227

Post by roywiggins »

april_22 wrote: post #184
throwaway09223 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there's none of that. These pictures aren't being used for any kind of science. They're 100% PR pieces, made to look pretty - which is fine!

Which makes me wonder how all these galaxies and nebulas would look like in real life. Would they look similar to how they colored it? Are those images maybe potraying a completely wrong reality?

You can see different images of the Horsehead nebula and the differences in how colors are presented. They vary substantially, but not in any way that matters, at least to me on an aesthetic level. It's more like the difference between different white balances (which are, to some extent and in some contexts, arbitrary) in a terrestrial image.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsehead_Nebula

Maybe one or another of them is more "true to life" but since human eyes never evolved to view this stuff, there's no reason to think that the best and most informative view of an astronomical object is the visible light one.

Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live

#228

Post by VerminOctopus1 »

oittaa wrote: post #96

Unfortunately the NASA stream online was a disaster. Choppy video and it seemed like nobody had prepared anything. Also 720p in 2022... Don't get me wrong, the images are amazing, but when small startups like Rocket Lab can have uninterrupted streams all the way to the orbit, but NASA stream from a studio looks more amateurish than your average 13-year-old Fortnite player on Twitch, it leaves a pretty bad impression.

I think NASA’s funding generally goes towards doing science rather than optimizing their Fortnite streams

Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live

#229

Post by oAlbe »

racingmars wrote: post #221
jcims wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish astronomers would come up (or use) a standard mechanism for indicating the field of view of an image. The scale of this one in the night sky is much larger than the deep field one.

The image details do have the dimensions listed in a standard measure down under the "Fast Facts" section; I assume this will be included for every image release. The deep field image says it's about 2.4 arcmin across[1], Stephan's Quintet image is about 7.4 arcmin across[2], etc. [1] https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/035/01G... [2] https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/034/01G...

Is there a way to rapport an arcmin to a measurement that would be more easily understandable? Not necessarily as a multiple of grains of rice.

Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live

#230

Post by pja »

nullc wrote: post #196
april_22 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will the JWST be able to make photos of black holes, similar to the ones the EHT made? And if yes, can the JWST be used to study black holes?

Producing an "image" of a black holes requires astronomical, ahem, resolution because they're so far away (thankfully). To achieve this kind of resolution you need an aperture of thousand of kilometers. The EHT images are created using synthetic aperture techniques to create an effective aperture with a diameter of earth's orbit around the sun. But this is only currently possible at radio frequencies due to our abili…

> The EHT images are created using synthetic aperture techniques to create an effective aperture with a diameter of earth's orbit around the sun.

Small correction: The EHT is a synthetic aperture telescope the size of the Earth, not the size of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

Synthetic aperture telescopes need both amplitude & phase information from each observing station & have to combine the phase of simultaneous observations in order to create the final image. We can’t do this on the scale of the earth’s orbit, because we don’t have a radio telescope on the far side of the sun!

Maybe one day ...

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