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Direct links -- Stephan's Quintet (NIRCam and MIRI Composite Image): https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G7DB1FHPMJCCY59CQGZC1YJQ.png https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01

• rootusrootus 4y ago
  Thanks for the direct links! > Webb's First Deep Field (NIRCam Image) Is this image distorted in any way at all? It feels like the galaxies are somehow oriented around a center spot. Not all of them, but enough to give the image a distorted feeling. Probably it's just my mind pattern matching against something that doesn't really exist.
  • palmtree3000 4y ago
    Gravitational lensing. From the description[0]: Other features include the prominent arcs in this field. The powerful gravitational field of a galaxy cluster can bend the light rays from more distant galaxies behind it, just as a magnifying glass bends and warps images. Stars are also captured with prominent diffraction spikes, as they appear brighter at shorter wavelengths. [0] https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2022/news-2022-035?Collection=First%20Images https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2022/news-2...
    • rootusrootus 4y ago
      Ah, that makes perfect sense. I guess I should have RTFM rather than just gawk at the pictures. Thanks for the ELI5!
      • russh 4y ago
        Oh, that makes sense. I was wondering about the odd shapes.
    • samstave 4y ago
      So, would that mean that the gravitational lensing over how-ever-many-light-years is ALSO coupled with the convex/cave aspect of the pico-adjusting of the JWT 'lens' such that even our JWT's pico-adjustments affect the NORMAL of the photons to the image? Can this be adjusted for? Wouldnt the pico-arc of the overall array affect the image output due to the distances involved such that we receive "false gravitational lensing, simply based on distance from the sensor" ? I wonder if a more precise version(s) of the hex lenses could be made such that they can 'normal-ize' on a much more refined basis. I know that each JWT is already capable of mico-flexes to each cell... but if we can develope an even further refinement (Moores law on the JWTs hex lenses resolution) we will be able to make thousands of images with varying the the normalization to each receiving area and comparing image quality. Also, I am sure there are folks who know the reflective characteristics of photons from each wavelength that would allow for orientations for each wavelength. -- Do ALL 'light' wavelengths, particles bounce off the reflector materials in the same way? - meaning do infra waves/photons bounce in the exact same way as some other wavelength with the exact same orientation of the sensor? --- Do they do any 'anti-gravitational-lensing' correction calcs to 'anti-bend' a photons path to us to 're-normalize' the path that we should have seen? Whats the current science behind such?
      • qwertywert_ 4y ago
        The gravitational lensing matches exactly how it looked in Hubble's deep field overlay, so I would guess no the JWST lens is not causing any "false" gravitational lensing? If that's what you are asking.
        • samstave 4y ago
          Thanks! I worded that poorly ; Wouldn't one be able to adjust the perceived path of the photon after time, to adjust for re-normalizing the path of the photon based on the understanding of the gravitational arc imposed on such -- meaning the astro equivalent of "ZOOM. ENHANCE!" :-)
          • qwertywert_ 4y ago
    • april_22 4y ago
      Will the JWST be able to make photos of black holes, similar to the ones the EHT made? And if yes, can the JWST be used to study black holes?
      • nullc 4y ago
        Producing an "image" of a black holes requires astronomical, ahem, resolution because they're so far away (thankfully). To achieve this kind of resolution you need an aperture of thousand of kilometers. The EHT images are created using synthetic aperture techniques to create an effective aperture with a diameter of earth's orbit around the sun. But this is only currently possible at radio frequencies due to our ability to capture, store, and coherently combine the phase information. It's essentially SDR beam forming across space and time. We can also study black holes though visible and IR observations through their effects of the things around them-- lensing from their mass, matter heated up by falling in. Here is an image I took of the relativistic speed matter jet believed to originate from black hole in M87: https://nt4tn.net/astro/#M87jet https://nt4tn.net/astro/#M87jet ... and Webb can do a lot better than I can with a camera lens in my back yard. :) Aside, there is some controversy about the EHT black hole images. A recent paper claims to be able to reproduce the ring like images using the EHT's imaging process and a simulated point source-- raising the question of the entire image just being a processing artifact. https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2022/05/13/m87-ring-or-artefact/ https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2022/05/13/m87-ring-or-arte... Though it's not surprising to see concerns raised around cutting edge signal processing-- LIGO suffered from a bit of that, for example, but confidence there has been improved by a significant number of confirming observations (including optical confirmations of ligo events).
        • april_22 4y ago
          Thank you! Another question: are they already planning a successor to JWST? Is something better even possible? If it took more than 30 years, we should start sooner than later :)
          • ceejayoz 4y ago
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proposed_space_observatories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proposed_space_observa... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAFIR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAFIR is the closest to a proposed JWST successor; the others largely serve different purposes.
  • coldpie 4y ago
    Yes, it is distorted by a gravitational lensing effect of a massive galaxy cluster. Each image has a short discussion at this link, and a longer discussion linked via "Learn more about this image" for even more info: https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • bcherry 4y ago
    Something missing from this discussion that's worth pointing out: This image shows profound "gravitational lensing", which you know. But what you might not know is that is precisely _why_ they chose to photograph it. This galaxy cluster (SMACS 0723) may be the most well known and powerful gravitational lens we have observed. The galaxies shown distorted around the edges are actually behind the lens, but are magnified by it. This means we can see even farther in this region of space than normal, because we compound the power of the JWST with the power of this natural lens. It all adds up to providing the "deepest" view of the universe yet, allowing us to see galaxies at a distance of more than 13.2B lightyears. This lets us see structures formed in the infancy of the universe, that wouldn't be possible looking at most other points in the sky, or even anywhere else in this deep field besides the perimeter of the lens in the middle.
    • t9999999999999 4y ago
      The elongated double lensed galaxy to the right of centre shows lots of point sources. These look like globular clusters or maybe satellite galaxies (maybe these are the same thing in the early universe?).
      • t9999999999999 4y ago
        The two lobes of that elongated lensed galaxy are mirror images of each other (slightly distorted). You can match up the point sources between them.
    • supernovae 4y ago
      The mind blowing part is that many of those smeared galaxies are the same galaxy just "smeared" around the curvature of space so it shows up in multiple places as we perceive it since its been warped by the gravitational mass/dark matter so strongly.
• mrandish 4y ago
  Thanks for posting these links! It was frustrating that the main NASA PR pages linked photos that were 1280x720. I guess that's to protect their bandwidth costs since much of the general public is probably viewing on mobile anyway and higher res would not only be slower but wasted bits. I just wish NASA had provided a link at the bottom of their low-res image pages to intermediate sized images (~4k) for desktop viewing.
  • coldpie 4y ago
    I believe this page has what you want: https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages Click on the image, twice, to get to a large-but-not-crazy resolution photo.
  • yread 4y ago
    you can also download full res (even uncompressed) images from ESA site (they developed two of the IR instruments)
  • Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    Not that I'm complaining since I hate jpeg compression, but you'd think that if they were concerned about bandwidth, they wouldn't use png...
  • epistasis 4y ago
    Mobile is actually a great platform to get Hugh resolution, since you can zoom in really easily and navigate the full image. However, after spending 10 minutes on mobile this morning, I was unable to find any high resolution images, and many images had that anti-pattern of a BS HTML gallery that severely restricts interacting with the image.
    • collaborative 4y ago
      Past a certain resolution, mobile devices automatically scale down images. This is hard to see in real-world images like pictures/galaxies. But try to open a really large image with some text in it and you will surely see how the text has turned blurry
• samstave 4y ago
  May anyone please ELI5 how to interpret the WASP-96 water spectrum graph above?
  • coldpie 4y ago
    Elements absorb light at certain frequencies. Given a spectral analysis of the light that passes through the atmosphere and another of the light that doesn't pass through the atmosphere, you can take the difference and see what frequencies were absorbed by the atmosphere. This tells you what elements make up the atmosphere. The H2O sections in the graph are the light frequencies that are absorbed by water molecules ("amount of light blocked" on the Y axis), indicating that the atmosphere contains water. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_spectroscopy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_spectroscopy Much more about this particular graph here: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-reveals-steamy-atmosphere-of-distant-planet-in-detail https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-...
• vishnugupta 4y ago
  If it helps others like me, I found it easier to download the images through wget and then open the local file through browser.
• ndm000 4y ago
  I know nothing about optics. What is the effect that causes the 6 or 8 points of light of come off of bright objects? Does it have to do with the hex-shaped mirrors on JWT?
  • supernovae 4y ago
    The simple answer is simply because of the physics of the scope, the support arms cause diffraction spikes. The hubble has them too but is a smaller mirror and different support arrangement. Super common on consumer scopes such as RCs, Newts and big tube scopes that aren't RASAs
  • arianvanp 4y ago
    it's called a point spread function; and is an artifact that occurs in any mirror telescope. https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/james-webb-spikes/ https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/james-webb-spikes/ explains it pretty well.
  • PavleMiha 4y ago
    Yes, and also two of the trusses to the secondary mirror (these are the two additional horizontal lines). The Hubble Space Telescope gets 4 lines because of its 4 trusses.
  • Keyframe 4y ago
    Aperture shape, so in this case I guess the answer is yes?
• pwned1 4y ago
  My god, look at the background of the first image at full scale.
  • jcims 4y ago
    I really wish astronomers would come up (or use) a standard mechanism for indicating the field of view of an image. The scale of this one in the night sky is much larger than the deep field one.
    • racingmars 4y ago
      The image details do have the dimensions listed in a standard measure down under the "Fast Facts" section; I assume this will be included for every image release. The deep field image says it's about 2.4 arcmin across[1], Stephan's Quintet image is about 7.4 arcmin across[2], etc. [1] https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/035/01G7DCWB7137MYJ05CSH1Q5Z1Z https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/035/01G... [2] https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/034/01G7DA5ADA2WDSK1JJPQ0PTG4A https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/034/01G...
      • jcims 4y ago
        I know that's usually there. I'd just love to see a little map scale bar or something in EXIF. [-----------] ° [--------] ' [----------------------] " [----------------] ,," Super easy.
        • jacquesm 4y ago
          Nice idea, really, and very easy to implement.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
      • oAlbe 4y ago
        Is there a way to rapport an arcmin to a measurement that would be more easily understandable? Not necessarily as a multiple of grains of rice.
• j0e1 4y ago
  > “Cosmic Cliffs” in the Carina Nebula (NIRCam Image): > https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G7ETPF7DVBJAC42JR5N6EQRH.png https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G7ETPF7DVBJAC42JR5N6EQRH.png Is this for real?! It looks like it came right out of a Sci-Fi movie/book. Could anyone explain how much of this is post-editing magic?
  • Retric 4y ago
    It’s real light, just color shifted as the JWST is designed to look at severely very distant and thus red shifted objects. The nebula is however much closer than that. Anyway, that looks like science fiction because science fiction borrowed that look from astronomy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula
    • aaroninsf 4y ago
      I have been wondering, how does the scale of color shifting relate to the red-shift present in deep-field subject? Idly wondering: are the furtherest objects being captured, so red-shifted, that the translation for human viewing done in these images more or less balances that out, so what we see in the translated images for some thickness of distance-bubble, is what we would see from a much closer perspective with the naked eye, akin to "true color." (I.e. so close that the relative red-shift would be insignificant...)
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • Retric 4y ago
        It’s not a 1:1 color mapping to correct for red shifting. Each color represents a wavelength, but the mapping is arbitrary and chosen to maximize contrast.
      • dredmorbius 4y ago
        I'm suspecting that there's no hard rule for what colours are assigned to what frequencies, though "more red" in processed images probably corresponds to "longer wavelengths" in captured imaging data. There's no specific red-shift interpretation, though for viewing of distant objects (and galaxies particularly which have reasonably uniform emission spectra) "redder" -> "more distant, receding faster". What you'd want to see specifically are the emission spectra showing absorption lines for well-known spectral bands. This shows specifically how red-shifted the light is, and is how red-shift was initially detected. I doubt that there's an intentional mapping of red-shifted appearance + spectral sensitivity to near-and-unadjusted appearance. Though that might be possible. In practice, I suspect the bands JWST is receiving don't map well to the RGB sensitivity of the human eye, but insteat JWST's sensitivity is tuned to scientific interests and value.
• anshumankmr 4y ago
  Anyone have the gigabyte size image of this?