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As I understand it, they aren't exactly lens artifacts, they're stars in the foreground. The telescope can't see past them and we don't know what's there. To me
by wwarner 4y ago
As I understand it, they aren't exactly lens artifacts, they're stars in the foreground. The telescope can't see past them and we don't know what's there. To me, it would defeat the observational mission of the JWST to fill it in with some pixels that were similar to the rest of the background. However, I also think you raise a good point, since all these images are constructed from non-visible infra-red light and many decisions are made in that conversion process.
- vecter 4y agoThey're not talking about the stars, but the hexagonal spikes sticking out of the stars. Those are artifacts of the hexagonal lenses that the telescope uses.
- jallen_dot_dev 4y agoI think you're both right to a degree? They are lens artifacts and we can't just remove them because we don't have the data of what's behind the spikes, as that is what the sensor can see. We'd be filling them in with black or our best guess based on neighboring pixels, either way it wouldn't be what one would "really" see. Unless we composited images from another source, then that'd come closer to accurate.
- kadoban 4y agoThat seems right. For popular consumption it'd probably be nice to have a black-filled version or something, whatever is least visually off-putting, but for science that seems much, much worse.
- matt123456789 4y agoNo, the hexagonal spikes are artifacts of the arms holding the secondary mirror in place.