Gloriously crisp new images of a distant galaxy from NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope

Originally published at: Gloriously crisp new images of a distant galaxy from NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope | Boing Boing

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For anyone interested in the meaning of the mu measurements assigned to the Spitzer and Webb comparisons:

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While viewing, try to keep the Star Trek theme from playing in your head, I dare you.

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This big telescope is quite a feat. The infrared camera chips are amazing. As far as I can tell, this is a side project of Raytheon’s FLIR sensor group. Naturally, there’s not much information about them visible on the web.
If you’re interested in the technology behind the infrared sensors, here’s a paper about them written by one of the professors in the place I work at the University of Arizona. They have advanced quite a bit from the lead sulfide lumps they used when I was a wee lad.

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This is because we can’t see in infrared, even on the Webb.

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excuse me, you mean the BETTY WHITE SPACE TELESCOPE.

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Oh my. I cannot wait for the beauty and wonder this thing is going to reveal for everyone. I remember when B5 used reference Hubble shots to base many of their space backgrounds on, because JMS posited (paraphrased) “What looks more amazing than the beauty of actual space?” - what are folks going to do with the leap forward these images are going to provide us?

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Debussy’s La Mer comes to my mind.

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any idea what makes the stars so pointy? are the mirrors hexagonal, or something like that?

i guess i figured contained shapes even if blurry would be more useful than image wide lens flares. ( though it makes for a really stunning view! )

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so. space farts. right.

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Not sure I’m loving the ‘Star of Bethlehem’ effect JWST gives to anything brighter than a pinhole.

It’s a bit more complicated than hexagonal mirrors but basically it’s the three struts holding the secondary mirror in place (as well as the 18 mirror hexagons each of which contribute their own spikes)

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Indeed, hexagonal mirrors.
It’s possible to remove the star effect in post-processing, as it’s rather well defined. These test images don’t get that beautification treatment since the engineers want to see all the raw data.

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I figured it was just lens flare.

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see this is what happens when you let jj abrams build a telescope :wink:

( thanks for the link and info @Doctor_Faustus and @nixiebunny! )

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As a newly-minted astronomy nut, I can’t like this comment enough.

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Coincidentally, I was pointing my telescope at the Large Magellanic Cloud last weekend. Three quick points:

It’s not a “distant” galaxy - it’s one of the closest galaxies we can see, by a huge margin. It’s a dwarf galaxy that’s orbiting the milky way. You wouldn’t want to have to drive there, but for a galaxy it’s basically right next to us.

It’s far south in the sky. You need to be south of 20 deg N latitude (e.g. the south coast of Cuba) to see it at all.

It’s amazing. Because it’s so close and so small, we can wrap our eyes and minds around a lot of wonderous galaxy features it’s showing us.

For example: it’s a barred-spiral galaxy (see below), meaning it has a dense rotating “bar” across the middle with trailing stars in the bar’s wake. On the leading edge of rotation, at the end of one of the bars, there’s a massive nebula that’s one of the most energetic star-forming regions we can see. Stars are blasting old remnants and forming anew. It’s hot and glowing and it’s over a thousand light-years across. A lot of it we can’t see because of dust, which infra-red can peek straight through. I can’t wait for the infrared images from Webb.

image
Image source

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Here’s a link that shows the current status of Webb: Where Is Webb?
It also has links that go into more detail of the various components and setup of the spacecraft.

I’ve been following this mission for years, & have despaired at every setback & delay… then to finally have it launch, and then to have every part of the deployment to go like clockwork… now, the pent-up breath can be released at last.
It’s gonna work!
Woo! Woo!

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This is what stars really look like.

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David Bowie Dance GIF

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