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It'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
by SiempreViernes 2mo ago
It'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 2mo 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 2mo 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 2mo 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 2mo 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 2mo agoIt's actually more like a really, really tall pyramid.
- zeven7 2mo agoIf you get a black pixel you get a 46 billion light-year line-cone
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- NooneAtAll3 2mo 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 2mo agoAre you saying this may be a bad investment?
- ButlerianJihad 2mo 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.