Nasa James Webb Space Telescope Thread

[Mook]

 

[blue-sun]

Got my stamps. Had to order them from USPS since the local branch had none.

#nerdgasm

 

[Pewter-Camaro]

Got my stamps. Had to order them from USPS since the local branch had none.

#nerdgasm

View attachment 132703

 

[blue-sun]

I gotta send in my Menards rebates in style!

 

[Jimy Bilmo]

Neptune's rings

 

[Mook]

How come the rings are behind the planet? Shitty photoshop.

 

[blue-sun]

How come the rings are behind the planet? Shitty photoshop.

 

[blue-sun]

 

[blue-sun]

NASA’s Webb Takes Star-Filled Portrait of Pillars of Creation - NASA

Download the full-resolution, uncompressed version and supporting visuals from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

www.nasa.gov

 

[blue-sun]

NASA Telescope Takes 12-Year Time-Lapse Movie of Entire Sky - NASA

Pictures of the sky can show us cosmic wonders; movies can bring them to life. Movies from NASA’s NEOWISE space telescope are revealing motion and change

www.nasa.gov

This mosaic is composed of images covering the entire sky, taken by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) as part of WISE’s 2012 All-Sky Data Release. By observing the entire sky, WISE can search for faint objects, like distant galaxies, or survey groups of cosmic objects.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

 

[FirstWorldProblems]

NASA Telescope Takes 12-Year Time-Lapse Movie of Entire Sky - NASA

Pictures of the sky can show us cosmic wonders; movies can bring them to life. Movies from NASA’s NEOWISE space telescope are revealing motion and change

www.nasa.gov

I legit can't figure out what i'm looking at but I am amazed by it lol

Every time I try to comprehend the scale of this thing my brain can't process it. Like our inconsequential human selves can look thirteen...billion...lightyears..in to the past. What

 

[FirstWorldProblems]

My simpleton ass is sitting here wondering "can't it just find a planet with blue on it and zoom in to see the aliens"

Disappointingly, the answer is no

How does a telescope like the James Webb zoom in or out from a planet in our solar system to another Galaxy?


It doesn’t. One of the things people don’t understand is “zoom” is not a thing in serious telescopes. How big an object is as seen by the scope is related to its overall focal length and focal ratio. The longer the focal length, the more “zoomed” an object is. Since this is a fixed value you can’t “zoom” in and out unless you change the focal length.

For visual telescopes you zoom in by changing eyepieces. What the eyepiece is doing is acting as a focal reducer or lengthener, changing the overall focal length.

But in imaging instruments like the JWST, the only way to “zoom” in and out is to use lenses in the “imaging train” on specific instruments to change the focal length. Most of them do not. Instead they use shutters and fine mirror control to steer the light to different sensors.

The Hubble Space Telescope has lenses on some of its cameras to allow it to “zoom” in and out. The JWST is a much more fixed design. So you learn to live with the built-in field of view and just block light you don’t need to focus on detail you want to see.

Remember, JWST is principally a deep sky instrument. It isn’t meant to be a Solar System telescope. Ground-based scopes do a better job most of the time. It is meant to look deep or at really small things like exoplanets. For that, you want a long focal length and at 431 feet, the JWST has a very long focal length indeed! Over twice that of the Hubble Space Telescope at 189 feet.

So JWST by design “zooms” in at better than twice that of Hubble. And I thought my piddlin’ 1370mm was a deep sky imager!

 

[SpeedSpeak2me]

Think of it this way, the "light" they're looking at emanated from the star millions or billions of year ago. But since light travels at a fixed speed in space (vacuum) it is just now reaching us. On a smaller scale it would be like someone in California turning on a light and a person in Hawaii seeing it turn on a few minutes later due to the speed at which light travels.

Just scale it up a bazillionthousand times.

 

[Pewter-Camaro]

Yeah you know shit is serious when they measure the distance in time based units.

 

[blue-sun]

Think of it this way, the "light" they're looking at emanated from the star millions or billions of year ago. But since light travels at a fixed speed in space (vacuum) it is just now reaching us. On a smaller scale it would be like someone in California turning on a light and a person in Hawaii seeing it turn on a few minutes later due to the speed at which light travels.

Just scale it up a bazillionthousand times.

Great explanation. My brain hurts sometimes trying to comprehend when these astrophysicists talk. I'm clearly not smart enough to do it, but I think it's super cool!

 

[FirstWorldProblems]

Think of it this way, the "light" they're looking at emanated from the star millions or billions of year ago. But since light travels at a fixed speed in space (vacuum) it is just now reaching us. On a smaller scale it would be like someone in California turning on a light and a person in Hawaii seeing it turn on a few minutes later due to the speed at which light travels.

Just scale it up a bazillionthousand times.

I mean I get it but it's just crazy to think that this thing has one giant picture of the sky, some of the galaxies you're seeing are a billion lightyears away, some are 5b away, all the way back to the until almost the beginning of the universe.

 

[SpeedSpeak2me]

Another analogy, someone 500' feet away from you claps. You see the clap but don't hear it for a second or two due to the speed of sound in the earth's atmosphere, depending on your elevation and barometric pressure.

The "clap" is a single pulse of light emitting from the star, we're just waiting to see it, for billions of years.

Shit, for all we know the things we are seeing now might not even be there anymore.

 

[blue-sun]

Another analogy, someone 500' feet away from you claps. You see the clap but don't hear it for a few second due to the speed of sound in the earth's atmosphere, depending on your elevation and barometric pressure.

The "clap" is a single pulse of light emitting from the star, we're just waiting to see it, for billions of years.

Shit, for all we know the things we are seeing now might not even be there anymore.

 

[blue-sun]

Haunting Portrait: NASA’s Webb Reveals Dust, Structure in Pillars of Creation - NASA

Download the full-resolution, uncompressed version and supporting visuals from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

www.nasa.gov

 

[Jimy Bilmo]

Haunting Portrait: NASA’s Webb Reveals Dust, Structure in Pillars of Creation - NASA

Download the full-resolution, uncompressed version and supporting visuals from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

www.nasa.gov

That's what nightmares are made of.

 

[SpeedSpeak2me]

That's what nightmares are made of.

My nightmares are fueled by cheap beer and regret. This just helps visualize it. ?

 

[FirstWorldProblems]

Haunting Portrait: NASA’s Webb Reveals Dust, Structure in Pillars of Creation - NASA

Download the full-resolution, uncompressed version and supporting visuals from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

www.nasa.gov

Wtffff, same area, different type of camera (also posted above)

 

[blue-sun]

It's crazy to think of what we'll see with this telescope and what else about the universe we'll learn from this.

 

[blue-sun]

 

[blue-sun]

Fiery James Webb Space Telescope image shows the early days of star formation

The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted a blazing cosmic hourglass filled with vibrant colors and hiding a fledgling star, or protostar, at its heart.

www.space.com

NASA’s Webb Catches Fiery Hourglass as New Star Forms by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, on Flickr