Here is the first astonishing image from the James Webb Telescope

[docosc]

Actually, due to cosmic expansion over the last 14 or so billion years, they are much, much farther away than they appear.

[dabeyc]

fine, if you want to throw science at me.

[IRobot]

meh… its not going to replace my cat as the background on my iPhone… so why do they bother?

[Jesse13927]

Yeah, but what about your cat’s iPhone background?

[dfaris]

Explore JWST’s first image in full resolution!

[benzbanana]

I like big clusters and I cannot lie…

[timd]

James Webb: Nasa space telescope delivers spectacular pictures

[Coffee_Man]

I clicked to say the exact same thing. I couldn’t unsee the Doctorr Who graphic come together in front of my eyes.

[Richard_Kirk]

@L0ki

@Richard_Kirk

But I like to know what I am looking at.

Good luck with that.

Well, we could have a bar showing a unit of angles we know how big it is. Peak sensitivities in nm for what is shown in the RGB channels. Hard to quite brightness in meaningful units, but we sort-of know how a galaxy is supposed to look.

[nixiebunny]

@Richard_Kirk

What is the right thing to do here? Once we have squeezed all the science out, we can edit the images for Maximum Pretty, and it hurts no-one. But I like to know what I am looking at.

The webbtelescope.org image pages have the information on which filters were used and what colors they were mapped to. They also tell the plate scale.
Scroll to the bottom of this page for all the details.
Southern Ring Nebula (NIRCam and MIRI Images Side by Side) | Webb

The general public doesn’t know enough about the details of infrared astronomy to make use of that information. That’s why it’s at the bottom of the page.

[docosc]

Here’s the Ars write-up, giving a thumbnail at least of what we are seeing.

And then there were five: NASA releases the rest of Webb’s first images

[shichae]

Here’s a neat YouTube short video explaining why the diffraction spike patterns are different between JWST and Hubble’s images:

Why are there spikes in JWST images?

[tcg550]

Astrophysicist Dr. Brian May and 10cc founder Graham Gouldman released a song today to mark the first images.

Graham Gouldman and Brian May - Floating in Heaven (Official Video)

[Scurra]

@Coffee_Man

I couldn’t unsee the Doctorr Who graphic come together in front of my eyes.

My favourite joke from this was that it proves the monkeys and typewriters theory: give the universe 13bn years and it will eventually replicate a frame from a low-budget animation…

[docosc]

Wanna watch an astrophysicist absolutely enthralled?

An astrophysicist's live reaction to the first JWST science images

[smulder]

[NukeML]

[shichae]

Is this from the 2001 or from Ready Player One!

[hecep]

Yes! Based on the image data, can the actual locations of the gravitational lens “distorted” galaxies be determined and thereby be shown “correctly”, however simply in some graphic?

[Richard_Kirk]

@nixiebunny

@Richard_Kirk

What is the right thing to do here? Once we have squeezed all the science out, we can edit the images for Maximum Pretty, and it hurts no-one. But I like to know what I am looking at.

The webbtelescope.org image pages have the information on which filters were used and what colors they were mapped to. They also tell the plate scale.
Scroll to the bottom of this page for all the details.
Southern Ring Nebula (NIRCam and MIRI Images Side by Side) | Webb

The general public doesn’t know enough about the details of infrared astronomy to make use of that information. That’s why it’s at the bottom of the page.

Thanks.

Yep. I agree: the average punter may not know much about infrared astronomy. They will probably not know that the pictures they are see are not what they would see if the Webb had an eyepiece. But they won’t ever question what they are shown if we don’t provide a bit of extra information. And that might lead to a more general understanding. And us nerds want to share.

This isn’t BoingBoing’s fault - everyone does it. We get pictures from Mars Orbiter showing blue patches and I don’t know how much they have dicked with the colours. Or colour enhanced pictures from Mercury or the Moon.

I actually find the diffraction spikes helpful - they are only visible about very bright objects, which are probably foreground stars. It would be weird if they weren’t there.