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Title doesn't match submission: it's not really a "coordinate" in 3D space, you "adopt" a pixel from the early imagery taken by the Nancy Grace Roman Space Tele
by pixelesque 1mo ago
Title doesn't match submission: it's not really a "coordinate" in 3D space, you "adopt" a pixel from the early imagery taken by the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
Maybe that can be reverse-projected back to something like a coordinate (if you know the distance), but it's not the same thing.
- SiempreViernes 1mo agoIt's a coordinate on the celestial sphere, which is just as good a coordinate as anything else. Now, if the title had said something like "place" you might have a case that the expectation is that a specific spacetime point is being defined.
- darthoctopus 1mo agothat's only true if Roman were to do a continuous stare. However, it (as with any telescope) has to re-point from time to time in order to look at different targets.
- pixelesque 1mo agoIt's not even that though if we are going to be nit-picky: it's a coordinate (not quite sure what the pixel extent would subtend to solid-angle-wise, but...) based off the coordinate frame of where the space telescope will be when the image is taken in spherical coordinates. That's not "exclusive". The "pixel" is the exclusive bit.
- SiempreViernes 1mo agoWith much charity I can imagine you meant: "but what if Roman points at the same bit twice and they assign the same patch of sky to different people?". Well, in that case they probably messed up because to me it seems clear they intend to assign each patch of sky to a distinct identity. However, as written it sounds like you are essentially objecting that an address along Central Park (in New York city) is "not exclusive" because there are other "Central Park"s in the USA.
- nyeah 1mo agoSo you get a lot more than one point for your money, you get a semi-infinite line. EDIT: Is really cone, see below.
- thayne 1mo agoIt's actually more like a really, really tall pyramid.
- zeven7 1mo agoIf you get a black pixel you get a 46 billion light-year line-cone
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- NooneAtAll3 1mo agoby the same logic, you get a lot more than your home lot, but also 6400km of rock below it just as useless in practical terms
- nyeah 1mo agoAre you saying this may be a bad investment?
- ButlerianJihad 1mo agoIt's not a coordinate. It's not on any sphere. They numbered all the pixels in the CCD of the telescope's sensors. The WFI is a 300.8-megapixel camera. So each pixel in that array is numbered. Wherever the telescope looks, your pixel will sense some light or darkness. That's it. That's the Tweet. No coordinates involved. In fact, you'll need some math to convert the ordinal numbers of the pixels back into a 2D coordinate on the plane of the sensor array. It's laid out in a unique way. You can see the layout in the official logo.
- ortusdux 1mo agoThank you for the clarification. My brain read the headline and imagined a combination of what3words and the stargate address system!
- chermi 1mo agoIt's a solid angle basically, right ? That's a coordinate
- karmakaze 1mo agoNasaFTs are back in style!