Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the past few hundred years until recently, we've been seeing bright and fuzzy dots. There's a difference between that, and ~640000 square pixels worth of details we see in the article.
I think about this a lot. We are the first people in human history to see the planets up close, so to speak. For thousands of years, humans stared up at the sky and watched these luminous dots change position over time. They made up stories about them, tracked them, designed instruments to turn these blurry, luminous dots into slightly-less-blurry luminous dots. But in this long human journey of thousands of years, w…
Hubble Captures Crisp New Image of Jupiter and Europa
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Re: Hubble Captures Crisp New Image of Jupiter and Europa
#62I'm really disappointed that JWST doesn't support visible light imaging. Maybe there's better science value to non-visible light sources but for PR it is great.
Re: Hubble Captures Crisp New Image of Jupiter and Europa
#63Re: Hubble Captures Crisp New Image of Jupiter and Europa
#64For one Hubble, something like a dozen of Keyhole spy telescopes have been launched [0]. Just imagine the kind of science we would have gotten if we launched a dozen of Hubbles instead... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen
I think one can readily argue (and I'm a physicist, so I really love outward-looking telescopes) that reconnaissance satellites will tend to make the world a more-peaceful place. Uncertainty can lead humans to make decisions to handle a worst-case scenario that isn't actually taking place. High-quality imaging makes it difficult for nation-states to bluff or to understate the scale of decay/disaster and allows for fi…
We built nuclear power plants not because we needed electricity, but because we needed plutonium for the bomb. We went to the moon in part because "it is hard", but mainly as a way to stick it to the Russkies. We built space telescopes to spy on the "opponent". Yes, that did indeed kept the world in a balance for quite some time, amazingly, but imagine if we, collectively, were just a tad smarter and instead of this, directed our efforts to science.
Re: Hubble Captures Crisp New Image of Jupiter and Europa
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always wish that it was a little easier to find the pages with high resolution downloads of all these amazing NASA telescope and rover images. It'd be great if they could create one central repository that all of them would go to for people to look through.
https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/ Is pretty good. Can filter by mission, instrument, or target. Resolution is kind of hit or miss, as a lot of it is raw or minimally processed, but that is part of the fun.
Re: Hubble Captures Crisp New Image of Jupiter and Europa
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
The famous "deep field" image from Hubble almost didn't happen, at least for many more years, due to limited time availability[0]. > “The telescope allocation committee would never have approved such a long, risky project,” Other similar "high risk" experiments would be more likely to occur if time constraints were not such a concern. [0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2015/04...
Hubble’s replacement, James Webb, could offer us an opportunity to have a second space telescope. We just need to figure out how to repair the Hubble.
Most of the price of JW is research and development anyway. It will not be 2x the price, it will be much less, so even if we ignore the possible scientific output, from a purely financial perspective two would be a bargain.
I just don't understand why we build one JW, and one Hubble, but we can afford 12 KHs and god know how many other spy telescopes...
Re: Hubble Captures Crisp New Image of Jupiter and Europa
#67For one Hubble, something like a dozen of Keyhole spy telescopes have been launched [0]. Just imagine the kind of science we would have gotten if we launched a dozen of Hubbles instead... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen
How many Hubbles could we have made if we didn't have to spend billions of dollars after it launched to fix manufacturing fuckups?
Re: Hubble Captures Crisp New Image of Jupiter and Europa
#68Isn't a storm's slowing down is normal due to loss of energy? Probably am missing some physics 101...
Also, I didn't know there were auroras on Jupiter: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1613a/
Re: Hubble Captures Crisp New Image of Jupiter and Europa
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many Hubbles could we have made if we didn't have to spend billions of dollars after it launched to fix manufacturing fuckups?
How many?
If the subsequent Hubbles cost as much as the first one actually cost: about 0.5 Hubbles
It's not totally on apples to apples comparison. There would probably be some cost reductions if you made ten hubbles. On the other hand, some of the servicing missions upgrade or even added instruments, so I suppose you'd need to take that into account
Re: Hubble Captures Crisp New Image of Jupiter and Europa
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hubble’s replacement, James Webb, could offer us an opportunity to have a second space telescope. We just need to figure out how to repair the Hubble.
And I really fail to see why we build ONE James Webb. What of there is anomaly at launch? Why not build two? If one fails, we have another. If both launch, we have two telescopes! (Well, I don't know how difficult to have to instruments bobbing around L2 point). Most of the price of JW is research and development anyway. It will not be 2x the price, it will be much less, so even if we ignore the possible scientific o…
If only this was true.