JCC The All-New, All-Different JCC Astronomy Thread

James Webb imagery should be unveiled any minute now in NASA's livestream here:

 

And here it is! The first image from the James Webb Telescope:



https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/...livers-deepest-infrared-image-of-universe-yet

 

For a quick guide to that image.... the pointy bits are stars, the smudgy bits are galaxies, and the smudgy arcs are gravitationally lensed galaxies

 

Are all the photos going to appear so warped?

 

Not to this extent no, this location is just particularly suited for this as it has the galaxy clusters that is good for gravitational lensing. That can be found elsewhere as well so it's not entirely unique to this spot of sky, but that's not accidental that it's such a prominent feature of this image.

I think all the other first targets won't show this (also an effect of how deep you're looking, so stuff in this galaxy won't have the same conditions)

 

Great image. According to the Nasa website,

 

Watching the NASA livestream. Terrible broadcast quality. Very disappointing.

 

This reminds me of the promo videos on early BluRays hocking the increased visual clarity and sound over DVD. I think sometimes a DVD had a BluRay promo on it. (However that worked - ha)

Seeing the swirl of individual galaxies is fascinating. An object of such unfathomable size seen from so far way it’s a colorful patterned shape.

Question: What is gravitational lensing?

 

I got you. You just need to have 13 minutes.
In short:

Gravity is so strong around dense areas of the universe, that it bends light. And we are receiving that light from one source, but it appears to come to us from multiple sources around the center of our image.

What do you mean?

On topic:

 

Thank you.

If I’m understands this correctly:

Gravitational Lensing is the light of stars and galaxies being distorted by the gravity of other objects it passes before reaching earth. It can magnify the brightness of light, warp the shape, and actually cause a single object to appear as multiple objects.

Basically it’s gravity distorting light in a similar way to a lens. The arcing lights in the images look like that from the vantage point of Earth.

Gravitational Lensing is also a way to reveal objects that can’t be seen. Sort of like Yoda and the Younglings looking at the gravity of know objects to reveal Kamino’s location.

 

Pretty much.

The object (a distant galaxy) might be behind all of what we see in the photo, but we see its light coming from a bunch of different directions that form a circle, because of the bending of light.

Kinda, even though I would say that this logic applies better to invisible objects (black holes, dark matter, etc)
The light coming from these galaxies is actually observed by us, it's just that we observe it in a weird manner, so to speak.

 

The broadcast kept freezing, there seemed to be delays/echoes when there were switching to presenters in other locations... As if NASA's web servers were struggling with the increased traffic. You'd expect better quality from them.

 

And then of course there's microlensing (not pictured), which is basically the kid's table of exoplanet science, since it detects planets once, with no capability of follow-up.

In those cases, a planet passes in front of a background star, acting as a lens and causing the star to brighten. So it's graviational lensing, but on a very short time scale, because there's a measurable relative motion in the sky between the background star and the foreground star/planet

 

Pictures were pretty.

But I am with the camp that compared this to the "HD revolution", to which I was never particularly enthralled.

It is wonderful that we have enhanced clarity and can see further and deeper into the spectrum. But the hope is those improved tools deliver breakthroughs in understanding. Unless there is content and meaning to what you are seeing, it is just celestial fireworks, time delayed several billion years.

Until the science breaks down the pictures, the James Webb is just competing with digital artists' renderings of space for desktop wallpaper choices.

I also would like to advocate for looking closer to home. The picture the James Webb took of Jupiter was very interesting. I think much improved views of our neighborhood of this galaxy will be quite beneficial in a more practical sense then perhaps the deeper explorations of time and the universe's early stages (not that they are without merit, just perhaps a touch more philosophical/historical in basis then leading humanity towards something new).

I look forward to future updates. Just expect it will be more then "look, pretty picture."

 

Jupiter's fun, but routine use of James Webb for things within the solar system is a waste of the telescope.

The science is coming, it's just taking a bit more time (for example, the science-level planet spectra are being worked on right now; they just released something publicly to look fancy)

 

What do you think will be coming?

 

One example here is this one:
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/...steamy-atmosphere-of-distant-planet-in-detail

Which I'm hearing through various channels is that while that image of the spectrum is out there to show that this can find some distinct signs of water in the atmosphere of a planet around another star, there's a more thorough data reduction going on. And then after that, to actually dig through things, contextualize those results, and get them published, all that takes time, although I don't think it's unreasonable that those papers will start rolling out this year. And that's just one planet; there's going to be a lot more exoplanets being observed and characterized.
There's some other stuff not related to planets, but that's not directly on my radar the way the planetary results are.

There's going to be a huge jump forward in understanding what planets around other stars are made up of and start to infer at least some things about habitability out there, as well as likely getting a better understanding of planetary formation processes.

Specific quote: " Over the coming year, researchers will use spectroscopy to analyze the surfaces and atmospheres of several dozen exoplanets, from small rocky planets to gas- and ice-rich giants. Nearly one-quarter of Webb’s Cycle 1 observation time is allocated to studying exoplanets and the materials that form them.

This NIRISS observation demonstrates that Webb has the power to characterize the atmospheres of exoplanets—including those of potentially habitable planets—in exquisite detail."

For a point of comparison, that 'first image' that was released was taken on July 7th. We're not even two weeks out from these images being taken, so to get data and then do science well and publish results is going to take some time.

 

Stop being so slow, science!

 

Science faster!

 

If this were a movie telescope we'd already know stuff.

 

Science just needs George Lucas to direct it.

“Faster and more intense.”

 

I want it look out into the void and see another telescope looking back.

How quick does that change everything?