Way to brighten my day with awe and wonder, way to ruin my day with existential dread about our place in the universe.
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
#32Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t most astronomy photos colorized (and not actually such vivid colors in real life).
Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live
#33Dumb question. Why can’t we focus on a single exoplanet, look for mountains, grass, buildings? Why am I so stupid but isn’t this the obvious thing to do?
There aren't telescopes big enough to do that.
Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live
#34Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live
#35Dumb question. Why can’t we focus on a single exoplanet, look for mountains, grass, buildings? Why am I so stupid but isn’t this the obvious thing to do?
We can, and do. They're so far away that even our largest telescopes see only a few pixels.
Examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HR_8799_Orbiting_Exoplane...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Beta_Pictoris_b_in_Motion...
When Hubble looked at Pluto, it was a low-detail blur ("The Hubble raw images are a few pixels wide"), and that's within our solar system. https://esahubble.org/images/opo1006h/
Remember, the first exoplanet was detected in 1992, and not by imaging; prior to that we didn't even know if they existed at all. JWST's planning started in 1996.
Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live
#36Here is a Hubble side by side of the deep field for comparison https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10159217085846758&se...
Right and it's slightly rotated, 20-30 degrees (guess). Just for others that try to line them up
Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live
#37A lot of the pictures have some bright stars with 6 long lens flare like points coming out of them in a consistent pattern. Is that because of the hexagonal shape of JWT's lenses/mirrors?
It's not the mirrors, it's the three struts supporting the reflector. Hubble shows four spikes because it has two struts. https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/james-webb-spikes/ https://www.universetoday.com/155062/wondering-about-the-6-r...
I think you also had a similar comment and linked the same article under the previous topic about JWST's first image?
The article is very informative, but my read of it is different: the three major "spikes" are in fact due to the hexagonal shape of the mirrors and how they're laid out. The struts also add three spikes, but: two of them coincide with the mirror spikes, while one of them (from the vertical strut) is visible on its own, and causes the smaller perfectly horizontal spike.
The image I'm basing this on is in your article with a caption starting from "The point spread function for the James Webb Space Telescope" [1]
[1]: https://bigthink.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/FOFC8ZPX0AIB...
Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live
#38Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t most astronomy photos colorized (and not actually such vivid colors in real life).
Yes.
The photon collectors on JWT detect infra red which is not visible to humans.
Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live
#39No post body was provided.
Re: James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live
#40Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t most astronomy photos colorized (and not actually such vivid colors in real life).
Yes. Or rather, it's a color palette mapping whatever range of the EM spectrum the image is gathered with to something we humans can see.
And yes, sometimes the mapping is done to make things look nice.