Every time I see a photo of Pillars of Creation it makes me wonder if we would even be able to distinguish an unfathomably optimized engineered system from what we consider raw physics with our current understanding.
NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
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Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#22Wild picture, but less sublime than the original. Same feels when NASA/ESA deconstructed the gas layers in 3d to refect the thin layers (like old school parallax animation background) instead of the awesome awesome voluminous celestia architecture I had in my head. Some old shows look worse in HD.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/pillars-of-creati...
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#23Is there a way to get rid of the six diffusion spikes in images from James Webb? Deconvolution or something? I guess it would have some cost in terms of resolution, but I think it would be worth it for these sorts of publicity images.
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, so radiation is being emitted and blocked in a way that coincides to the way we interpret 3d objects, is that right? Because if it would be uniform, the bright orange colors would be uniformly distributed?
> so radiation is being emitted and blocked in a way that coincides to the way we interpret 3d objects It's not coincidental, this is how our vision works.
No, I was thinking in terms that the pillars are glowing and illuminating themselves, which would be really coincidence to have this luminescence only on areas that would look like a shadow or not.
It turns out that for my original question, there is actually something illuminating it from the top-right. As massive as the pillars are, they are part of a yet bigger structure [0] and the brightness generated is allowing us to see it with better depth. It's really incomprehensible to grasp how large things can get.
[0]: (mobile data warning 52mb pic) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Eagle_Ne...
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#25Is there some limit on the number of pictures the Webb Telescope can take in a day?
Every time I see a picture from it, I just want more.
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#26I understand Nebulae like the Eagle Nebula are fairly dynamic regions of space, so I find it interesting that we have photographs of the same region over a 27 years time span and at a glance, the structure of the Pillars of Creation appears virtually identical. I understand that 27 years is minuscule on the cosmic timescale, but what order of timescale would be necessary for the evolution of Pillars of Creation to be…
Even more interesting when you think about the plethora of events that must be happening there in this interval of time at human scale. The Sun alone, 8 light minutes away, in seconds is consuming hydrogen and generating energy at amounts that we as humanity could use for thousands and thousands of years.
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#27Also look at the comparison to the Hubble image. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/st... Impressive to see the infrared spectrum seeing through all the background gas to the millions of stars.
Handy Dandy Slider action between the two!
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#28Also look at the comparison to the Hubble image. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/st... Impressive to see the infrared spectrum seeing through all the background gas to the millions of stars.
Handy Dandy Slider action between the two! https://esawebb.org/images/comparisons/weic2216/
Technically the comparison is not totally fair, that Hubble image was taken in visible light, while Webb's in infrared. Dust blocks visible light stronger, so background stars are effectively hidden from Hubble, but not from Webb. Here [1] you can see same field in visible and close infrared taken by Hubble. Webb of course shines in all the fine details and faint stars number.
[1] https://cdn.spacetelescope.org/archives/images/screen/heic15...
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#29Notice how every star twinkles the same way. I thought it was because of how the mirrors were arrayed. But this time the twinkles are different.
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#30Wild picture, but less sublime than the original. Same feels when NASA/ESA deconstructed the gas layers in 3d to refect the thin layers (like old school parallax animation background) instead of the awesome awesome voluminous celestia architecture I had in my head. Some old shows look worse in HD. https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/pillars-of-creati...
I do kinda get a bit more "oomph" from the old picture because it feels like it's been punched out of space rather than being a wispy thing in the way (e.g. you can see more stars through it.) Which is bonkers because the new photo is amazing.