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Your emphasis on true color is worth underscoring. I think it's a bit unfair to publish a photo like this one from James Webb without providing a few less-styli

Your emphasis on true color is worth underscoring. I think it's a bit unfair to publish a photo like this one from James Webb without providing a few less-stylized edits for comparison, and an explanation of what the colorization process entailed. Obviously as an infrared photo there isn't going to be any edit that gives us a great idea of what it would look like to the eye, but it seems like they chose the most wondrous-looking settings in photoshop on this one, as opposed to the truest.

aaroninsf 3y ago
Truest is a problematic word in this stuff, JW as you say doesn't even see the visible spectrum, and I don't find it helpful to ask for the least-inspiring fiction of those available. Arguably there is no "true" translation; the point of JW capturing what spectrum it does, is to reveal features obscured or invisible in the visible spectrum. Over the years I have come to reject the "what would the plain eye see" position as not helpful. We're tool-using monkeys and the phones we carry around now run supercomputers to quietly show not what the plain eye sees but something which works better for our needs—to be both evocative and information-rich. If and when we ever get a chance to gaze on Uranus ourselves, I myself imagine and hope it will be courtesy of some transformation of our embodiment that will look an order richer than even the most stylized images we have today, because they will be broad spectrum and be overlayed with semantic content rendered as perceptual to aid our executive functions... all of which will probably be running on some computation substrate other than our monkey mammal selves. Space isn't kind to those.
- lsaferite 3y ago
  FWIW, according to the specs the JWST starts at 600nm, which means it does at least cover the red visible spectrum. (R from RGB being 600-700nm per my understanding) It seems a shame they didn't include the 400-600nm range as well.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    > It seems a shame they didn't include the 400-600nm range as well. This seems to be a basic misunderstanding of the purpose of the telescope.
    - hnburnsy 3y ago
      True color, visible spectrum images could help garner public support for missions like this. When I see these images, I imagine future humans enjoying a fly by, looking out a large transparent window, and seeing these amazing views.
      - wholinator2 3y ago
        What happens when the true color, visible spectrum images are exponentially less interesting and more dull? Does that increase public support? I don't think anyone in the "general public" cares or even realizes what exact wavelengths are captured and translated in every image, they care how awesome it looks. To my understand, you cannot see the rings of uranus in the visible range. And remember all those first images from the JWST, those garnered public support preeetty heavily and those were all infrared and translated. On the science side, some wavelengths just do not survive interstellar travel. You need the entire range to get the most data. Lots of times visible phenomena are just white or grey or blue anyways. When there's something that's actually more interesting in visible light, we'll see it.
        dylan604 3y ago
        Let's also not forget that we have so many visible light telescopes already. JWST specifically needed to be a space platform way the hell away from the earth since it is essentially looking at heat. Being on earth or even in earth orbit would not be cold enough to make it worth while. Even still, we have to cool the systems because the heat from the electronics doing the science could interfere with its own readings. Once that coolant is gone, the platform will be pretty much useless. So it's not going to be wasting any time looking at things in the same spectrum that pretty much any telescope on the ground can do. Sure, we still have Hubble, but even the larger ground based telescopes with adaptive optics can see in more detail than Hubble at this point.
  - queuebert 3y ago
    Wavelength ranges for astronomical detectors are often tuned to the emissions of particular phenomena and for what gets through interstellar and intergalactic gas and dust the best. Unfortunately blue to green isn't very useful by these metrics.
- cco 3y ago
  I feel like it's relatively non-controversial to suggest "truest" would be something like what Uranus would look like out the window of your orbiting space craft. It's how we generally see pictures of Earth, e.g. from the point of view of a space walk from the ISS. If I look out the window of my spaceship and Uranus doesn't look like this photo, the post processing done here doesn't match with "reality" too well.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
saiya-jin 3y ago
Isn't whole JWT infrared since there is generally much more info for astronomers compared to visible-for-human-eye spectrum? Also infrared passes better through cosmic dust and nebulae much better, going back to first sentence. And since showing infrared picture to folks who can't see in it is less than pointless, they just shift it all into visible to a 'place' on spectrum which makes most sense for given picture. There can be some choosing fancier shades done there for general public but I would be surprised if they completely re-painted original 'shift' just to look more fancy (happy to learn the facts if anybody knows in any case).
- matt_j 3y ago
  The way I understand it, light from far away, very far away, is red-shifted because the universe is expanding at every point and the wavelength of the traveling light is stretched. Stretching the wavelength means light from the blue end of the spectrum moves closer to, or indeed, into the red end of the spectrum. If you want to look very deep into the past, say, 13 billion years ago, any light from galaxies that old has traveled 13 billion light years PLUS however much the universe has expanded and will be red-shifted out of the visible spectrum, so you need an infra-red telescope to see it. Hence, JWST. You simply can't see these things without using instruments that can detect the right light. On top of that, everything in the universe emits light across a broad spectrum, above and below the visible spectrum. We can enhance our knowledge of these things; stars, planets, galaxies, etc by using instruments that can "see" infra-red, radio, x-ray, gamma ray and that is additional information on top of what our eyes can see in the visible spectrum.
lordfrito 3y ago
I'm good with doctored images as long as I don't have to smell Uranus. punchline drum roll

aaroninsf 3y ago

Truest is a problematic word in this stuff, JW as you say doesn't even see the visible spectrum, and I don't find it helpful to ask for the least-inspiring fiction of those available. Arguably there is no "true" translation; the point of JW capturing what spectrum it does, is to reveal features obscured or invisible in the visible spectrum. Over the years I have come to reject the "what would the plain eye see" position as not helpful. We're tool-using monkeys and the phones we carry around now run supercomputers to quietly show not what the plain eye sees but something which works better for our needs—to be both evocative and information-rich. If and when we ever get a chance to gaze on Uranus ourselves, I myself imagine and hope it will be courtesy of some transformation of our embodiment that will look an order richer than even the most stylized images we have today, because they will be broad spectrum and be overlayed with semantic content rendered as perceptual to aid our executive functions... all of which will probably be running on some computation substrate other than our monkey mammal selves. Space isn't kind to those.

lsaferite 3y ago
FWIW, according to the specs the JWST starts at 600nm, which means it does at least cover the red visible spectrum. (R from RGB being 600-700nm per my understanding) It seems a shame they didn't include the 400-600nm range as well.
- dylan604 3y ago
  > It seems a shame they didn't include the 400-600nm range as well. This seems to be a basic misunderstanding of the purpose of the telescope.
  - hnburnsy 3y ago
    True color, visible spectrum images could help garner public support for missions like this. When I see these images, I imagine future humans enjoying a fly by, looking out a large transparent window, and seeing these amazing views.
    - wholinator2 3y ago
      What happens when the true color, visible spectrum images are exponentially less interesting and more dull? Does that increase public support? I don't think anyone in the "general public" cares or even realizes what exact wavelengths are captured and translated in every image, they care how awesome it looks. To my understand, you cannot see the rings of uranus in the visible range. And remember all those first images from the JWST, those garnered public support preeetty heavily and those were all infrared and translated. On the science side, some wavelengths just do not survive interstellar travel. You need the entire range to get the most data. Lots of times visible phenomena are just white or grey or blue anyways. When there's something that's actually more interesting in visible light, we'll see it.
      - dylan604 3y ago
        Let's also not forget that we have so many visible light telescopes already. JWST specifically needed to be a space platform way the hell away from the earth since it is essentially looking at heat. Being on earth or even in earth orbit would not be cold enough to make it worth while. Even still, we have to cool the systems because the heat from the electronics doing the science could interfere with its own readings. Once that coolant is gone, the platform will be pretty much useless. So it's not going to be wasting any time looking at things in the same spectrum that pretty much any telescope on the ground can do. Sure, we still have Hubble, but even the larger ground based telescopes with adaptive optics can see in more detail than Hubble at this point.
- queuebert 3y ago
  Wavelength ranges for astronomical detectors are often tuned to the emissions of particular phenomena and for what gets through interstellar and intergalactic gas and dust the best. Unfortunately blue to green isn't very useful by these metrics.
cco 3y ago
I feel like it's relatively non-controversial to suggest "truest" would be something like what Uranus would look like out the window of your orbiting space craft. It's how we generally see pictures of Earth, e.g. from the point of view of a space walk from the ISS. If I look out the window of my spaceship and Uranus doesn't look like this photo, the post processing done here doesn't match with "reality" too well.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

saiya-jin 3y ago

Isn't whole JWT infrared since there is generally much more info for astronomers compared to visible-for-human-eye spectrum? Also infrared passes better through cosmic dust and nebulae much better, going back to first sentence. And since showing infrared picture to folks who can't see in it is less than pointless, they just shift it all into visible to a 'place' on spectrum which makes most sense for given picture. There can be some choosing fancier shades done there for general public but I would be surprised if they completely re-painted original 'shift' just to look more fancy (happy to learn the facts if anybody knows in any case).

matt_j 3y ago
The way I understand it, light from far away, very far away, is red-shifted because the universe is expanding at every point and the wavelength of the traveling light is stretched. Stretching the wavelength means light from the blue end of the spectrum moves closer to, or indeed, into the red end of the spectrum. If you want to look very deep into the past, say, 13 billion years ago, any light from galaxies that old has traveled 13 billion light years PLUS however much the universe has expanded and will be red-shifted out of the visible spectrum, so you need an infra-red telescope to see it. Hence, JWST. You simply can't see these things without using instruments that can detect the right light. On top of that, everything in the universe emits light across a broad spectrum, above and below the visible spectrum. We can enhance our knowledge of these things; stars, planets, galaxies, etc by using instruments that can "see" infra-red, radio, x-ray, gamma ray and that is additional information on top of what our eyes can see in the visible spectrum.

lordfrito 3y ago

I'm good with doctored images as long as I don't have to smell Uranus. punchline drum roll