4 ms·

NASA's Webb depicts structure in 19 nearby spiral galaxies

97 points by FergusArgyll 3y ago

FergusArgyll 3y ago
Immediately set as my laptop background
- trescenzi 3y ago
  If you’ve got a Mac you can set it up as a live wallpaper and have it scroll across the image over the course of the day. I’m sure there’s a better way to do it but this is how I’ve done it with other Webb images in the past. https://github.com/trescenzi/dynamic_wallpapers https://github.com/trescenzi/dynamic_wallpapers
neverrroot 3y ago
Every time I dive into the virtual endlessness of deep space, I feel so blessed knowing we’re part of something beautiful. Cold. Brutal. Terrifying. Not even a pale blue dot, just a nothing but still something.
- bmitc 3y ago
  > I feel so blessed > Cold. Brutal. Terrifying. Are you sure? Haha.
  - neverrroot 3y ago
    Of course not, we all know it’s CGI upon a flat earth ;-) They have a darn hard case, can’t argue with that, can I?
baal80spam 3y ago
Finally!
holoduke 3y ago
Does anyone have an estimation if the amount of pixels if james web would make a full 360 degree image?
- pvg 3y ago
  It probably depends a lot on the instruments and processing used. This deep field image from a while back https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/035/01G7DCWB7137MYJ05CSH1Q5Z1Z https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/035/01G... Is about 4.5k pixels(as published)/0.04 degrees (2.4 arcmin) a side so 360 degrees of that would be an image with 40 million pixel sides unless I fatfingered something in calculator.
- GavinB 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - krapp 3y ago
    Why would you do some "quick napkin math" with, of all things, a system notorious for its inability to do precise math? You could have used a calculator. You could have literally written on a napkin. Why choose the worst possible tool for such a simple task?
    - GavinB 3y ago
      If you're going to yell at someone, at least do your own calculation so you can prove they're wrong first, please? Total Sky Area=4π×(2π360)^2×60^2 = 148,510,660 square arcminutes (you can also look this up easily) NIRCam has 9.7 square arcminutes FOV (Yes, I double checked this) NIRCam resolution is 2048 × 2048 x 2 modules for 2.4–5.0 µm (there are lots of different cameras and modules you could look at to make this estimate, but for a sense of magnitude this will work. If you looked at 0.6–2.3 µm that would be roughly 4x as many pixels for the 8 modules, I think? Again, napkin math for fun.) Total FoVs Needed = 148,510,660.8 / 9.7 ≈ 15,310,377 FoVs Total Pixels = (2048×2048×2)×15,310,377 ≈ 128,432,754,096,706 pixels LLMs used to be quite awful at math. Now they're solving quite complicated problems with sophisticated plugins. This is a simple and straightforward calculation, just getting the FOV and its resolution and then projecting that onto a sphere. And, yes, I probably should have posted the full calculation, it's definitely more interesting to see it all written out.
dheera 3y ago
I saw the title and thought it was Markarian's Chain (not to be confused with Markov's Chain) but it's not. I thought I'd share this picture I took of 19 galaxies rising over Mt. Lassen with a 500mm lens. It is stacked and tracked (separately for ground and sky) but the composition is unaltered. Many of these galaxies are 1/4 to 1/2 the size of a full moon, just too dim to see with the naked eye. https://dheera.net/photos/calnight/#&gid=1&pid=15 https://dheera.net/photos/calnight/#&gid=1&pid=15
- heads 3y ago
  That is brilliant, thank you so much for sharing. The galaxies’ enormous size is truly jaw dropping. I had absolutely no idea they were this large, in the night sky. Have you ever seen them live, though an image intensifier / night vision system? I feel there would be something profound about seeing a galaxy with my own (albeit enhanced) eyes.
  - dheera 3y ago
    I don't have a night vision system so haven't tried that on Markarian's chain. What is much easier for naked eye vision is the Andromeda galaxy, which is much closer. It is actually about 6 times the visual size of a full moon in the sky, though with naked eye in a dark enough place you can barely see the fuzzy blob of a core with off-center vision. You can see the core more clearly with binoculars. However it will look small because you are only looking at the core. The magnificant spiral arms are what extend around that core 6 times the size of a moon. You can easily see the spiral structure with a consumer full frame camera. A star tracker will produce a crystal clear image of it, but without a tracker, a short exposure and high ISO can still show its existence. Even a 50mm or 100mm lens is enough to make it out. At 500mm it will fill the whole frame almost corner-to-corner. It's huge. Keep in mind galaxies are extremely low density on average. So even though Andromeda has about 1 trillion stars, it's still mostly vacuum with lightyears of distance between adjacent stars inside it. So it appears much, much, much dimmer than the individual stars in the sky from our own galaxy.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    The only time I've seen things is from using one of Sony's mirrorless cameras with ultra high ISO while attached directly to a telescope. Things that would normally take long exposures were visible in realtime. I haven't tried using that with a wide angle lens. Would be interesting thing to try
ggm 3y ago
I find the unity of structures here quite re-assuring. It tends to say that large spinning masses of largely undifferentiated neutrons (or whatever) become structures which reflect both their spin, and gravity, and how the neutron stew decays as it cools. If there was only one, I'd be surprised. If we see many of more detailed forms but they tend to a common pattern, "thats physics"
- jojobas 3y ago
  It's mostly protons not neutrons.
  - digging 3y ago
    It's mostly dark matter. Apparently galaxies wouldn't be able to hold those shapes if they were merely made of the dust, gas, and stars we can see.
    - jjbinx007 3y ago
      I always thought that frame-dragging, or something similar, could account for this, but I assume it's been ruled out already.
      - magicalhippo 3y ago
        There is some debate regarding gravitational self-interaction. This[1] post gives an overview of a proposal by Deur. Note though that while this is peer-reviwed work, it's still contentious. [1]: https://astrobites.org/2020/08/17/the-alternative-to-dark-matter-may-be-general-relativity-itself/ https://astrobites.org/2020/08/17/the-alternative-to-dark-ma...
      - hoseja 3y ago
        The only thing "dark matter" and "dark energy" have going for them is unfalsifiability for our type 0.5 civilization. Keep in mind that general relativity isn't actually even fully worked out for real systems.
OhNoNotAgain_99 3y ago
[dead]
m3kw9 3y ago
Not the same but all galaxies billions of light years are part bare many similarities. I fathom the way things seem to mirror each other in the universe, civilizations will also be similar to our own. Given they all have exact rules of physics and math.
- dylan604 3y ago
  Or they are seeded by the same people. Yeah, I recently re-watched Stargate. As far as the exact rules of physics, we're built for 1G. We keep finding Super Earths where gravity would be more than 1G. How would those same physics and math work out for civilizations?
  - Sander_Marechal 3y ago
    That's just because our current way of finding exoplanets works best with heavier planets. There could be billions of earth-like planets but we can't (yet) find them effectively.

97 points by FergusArgyll 3y ago

FergusArgyll 3y ago

Immediately set as my laptop background

trescenzi 3y ago
If you’ve got a Mac you can set it up as a live wallpaper and have it scroll across the image over the course of the day. I’m sure there’s a better way to do it but this is how I’ve done it with other Webb images in the past. https://github.com/trescenzi/dynamic_wallpapers https://github.com/trescenzi/dynamic_wallpapers

neverrroot 3y ago

Every time I dive into the virtual endlessness of deep space, I feel so blessed knowing we’re part of something beautiful. Cold. Brutal. Terrifying. Not even a pale blue dot, just a nothing but still something.

bmitc 3y ago
> I feel so blessed > Cold. Brutal. Terrifying. Are you sure? Haha.
- neverrroot 3y ago
  Of course not, we all know it’s CGI upon a flat earth ;-) They have a darn hard case, can’t argue with that, can I?

baal80spam 3y ago

Finally!

holoduke 3y ago

Does anyone have an estimation if the amount of pixels if james web would make a full 360 degree image?

pvg 3y ago
It probably depends a lot on the instruments and processing used. This deep field image from a while back https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/035/01G7DCWB7137MYJ05CSH1Q5Z1Z https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/035/01G... Is about 4.5k pixels(as published)/0.04 degrees (2.4 arcmin) a side so 360 degrees of that would be an image with 40 million pixel sides unless I fatfingered something in calculator.
GavinB 3y ago
[flagged]
- krapp 3y ago
  Why would you do some "quick napkin math" with, of all things, a system notorious for its inability to do precise math? You could have used a calculator. You could have literally written on a napkin. Why choose the worst possible tool for such a simple task?
  - GavinB 3y ago
    If you're going to yell at someone, at least do your own calculation so you can prove they're wrong first, please? Total Sky Area=4π×(2π360)^2×60^2 = 148,510,660 square arcminutes (you can also look this up easily) NIRCam has 9.7 square arcminutes FOV (Yes, I double checked this) NIRCam resolution is 2048 × 2048 x 2 modules for 2.4–5.0 µm (there are lots of different cameras and modules you could look at to make this estimate, but for a sense of magnitude this will work. If you looked at 0.6–2.3 µm that would be roughly 4x as many pixels for the 8 modules, I think? Again, napkin math for fun.) Total FoVs Needed = 148,510,660.8 / 9.7 ≈ 15,310,377 FoVs Total Pixels = (2048×2048×2)×15,310,377 ≈ 128,432,754,096,706 pixels LLMs used to be quite awful at math. Now they're solving quite complicated problems with sophisticated plugins. This is a simple and straightforward calculation, just getting the FOV and its resolution and then projecting that onto a sphere. And, yes, I probably should have posted the full calculation, it's definitely more interesting to see it all written out.

dheera 3y ago

I saw the title and thought it was Markarian's Chain (not to be confused with Markov's Chain) but it's not. I thought I'd share this picture I took of 19 galaxies rising over Mt. Lassen with a 500mm lens. It is stacked and tracked (separately for ground and sky) but the composition is unaltered. Many of these galaxies are 1/4 to 1/2 the size of a full moon, just too dim to see with the naked eye. https://dheera.net/photos/calnight/#&gid=1&pid=15 https://dheera.net/photos/calnight/#&gid=1&pid=15

heads 3y ago
That is brilliant, thank you so much for sharing. The galaxies’ enormous size is truly jaw dropping. I had absolutely no idea they were this large, in the night sky. Have you ever seen them live, though an image intensifier / night vision system? I feel there would be something profound about seeing a galaxy with my own (albeit enhanced) eyes.
- dheera 3y ago
  I don't have a night vision system so haven't tried that on Markarian's chain. What is much easier for naked eye vision is the Andromeda galaxy, which is much closer. It is actually about 6 times the visual size of a full moon in the sky, though with naked eye in a dark enough place you can barely see the fuzzy blob of a core with off-center vision. You can see the core more clearly with binoculars. However it will look small because you are only looking at the core. The magnificant spiral arms are what extend around that core 6 times the size of a moon. You can easily see the spiral structure with a consumer full frame camera. A star tracker will produce a crystal clear image of it, but without a tracker, a short exposure and high ISO can still show its existence. Even a 50mm or 100mm lens is enough to make it out. At 500mm it will fill the whole frame almost corner-to-corner. It's huge. Keep in mind galaxies are extremely low density on average. So even though Andromeda has about 1 trillion stars, it's still mostly vacuum with lightyears of distance between adjacent stars inside it. So it appears much, much, much dimmer than the individual stars in the sky from our own galaxy.
- dylan604 3y ago
  The only time I've seen things is from using one of Sony's mirrorless cameras with ultra high ISO while attached directly to a telescope. Things that would normally take long exposures were visible in realtime. I haven't tried using that with a wide angle lens. Would be interesting thing to try

ggm 3y ago

I find the unity of structures here quite re-assuring. It tends to say that large spinning masses of largely undifferentiated neutrons (or whatever) become structures which reflect both their spin, and gravity, and how the neutron stew decays as it cools. If there was only one, I'd be surprised. If we see many of more detailed forms but they tend to a common pattern, "thats physics"

jojobas 3y ago
It's mostly protons not neutrons.
- digging 3y ago
  It's mostly dark matter. Apparently galaxies wouldn't be able to hold those shapes if they were merely made of the dust, gas, and stars we can see.
  - jjbinx007 3y ago
    I always thought that frame-dragging, or something similar, could account for this, but I assume it's been ruled out already.
    - magicalhippo 3y ago
      There is some debate regarding gravitational self-interaction. This[1] post gives an overview of a proposal by Deur. Note though that while this is peer-reviwed work, it's still contentious. [1]: https://astrobites.org/2020/08/17/the-alternative-to-dark-matter-may-be-general-relativity-itself/ https://astrobites.org/2020/08/17/the-alternative-to-dark-ma...
    - hoseja 3y ago
      The only thing "dark matter" and "dark energy" have going for them is unfalsifiability for our type 0.5 civilization. Keep in mind that general relativity isn't actually even fully worked out for real systems.

OhNoNotAgain_99 3y ago

[dead]

m3kw9 3y ago

Not the same but all galaxies billions of light years are part bare many similarities. I fathom the way things seem to mirror each other in the universe, civilizations will also be similar to our own. Given they all have exact rules of physics and math.

dylan604 3y ago
Or they are seeded by the same people. Yeah, I recently re-watched Stargate. As far as the exact rules of physics, we're built for 1G. We keep finding Super Earths where gravity would be more than 1G. How would those same physics and math work out for civilizations?
- Sander_Marechal 3y ago
  That's just because our current way of finding exoplanets works best with heavier planets. There could be billions of earth-like planets but we can't (yet) find them effectively.