NASA announces: First images to be released July 12. (I take this to mean the first “real”-ish images, as opposed to the “just testing” images we’ve seen so far.) Watch for them on Webb site, YouTube, and various other media. Some details in these pages:
Also, this NASA page, which for some reason Discourse will not preview:
Schedule says images will be released at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time, and will be viewable on nasa.gov/webbfirstimages and on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other places.
(Sorry, I can’t copy the actual links to all those pages because of the latest Discourse updates, which have thoroughly broken copy-and-paste functions for older browsers.)
One of the James Webb Space Telescope’s four primary scientific instruments, known as the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph instrument (NIRISS), has concluded its postlaunch preparations and is now ready for science.
That’s great news! The NIRISS, along with the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) were the two major contributions of the Canadian Space Agency to the JWST. The FGS was first powered on in late January and has been fully operational since mid-February.
The second of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s four primary scientific instruments, known as the Mid-Infrared instrument (MIRI), has concluded its postlaunch preparations and is now ready for science.
The last MIRI mode to be checked off was its coronagraphic imaging capability, which uses two different styles of masks to intentionally block starlight from hitting its sensors when attempting to make observations of the star’s orbiting planets. These customized masks allow for scientists to directly detect exoplanets and study dust disks around their host stars in a way that’s never been done
That’s a very unfair statement and seems to show that you haven’t thought this through very much. Releasing a raw image is very much like releasing any other kind of raw science data. It needs to be processed, evaluated, and a consensus reached on the inevitable areas of uncertainty. The release of important images or other data inevitably brings forth a cascade of questions from the media. The images need to be carefully described, and the questions answered. Otherwise, what the average Joe will see in many such pictures is just blips of light. At least they’re not waiting for papers to be published first, which often happens.
The other part of this news is that they apparently have some initial spectroscopic data for exoplanet atmospheres. If anything, that data will need even more explaining.
This doesn’t make sense. If they’re brought to tears by the images then the images are available. Nobody cares if it’s raw science data. It doesn’t need to be evaluated. Show us an image from Hubble next to one from the Webb so we can see how great it is.
What brings an expert waiting for his whole career for this data, who understands data that wasn’t changed for public consumption, is not the same as what will bring Joe Public to tears.
This is potentially a 20+ year mission that was a big investment of our space program and has the potential to wow the public and make them more curious about the universe and more supportive of science. You can wait a couple of weeks to see the images once they’ve made them ready.
Someone working on the telescope is going to understand exactly how and why JWST’s images are better than, say, Hubble’s - but that may not be super obvious to the lay public. They may not be aware of the limitations and strengths of different sorts of optics and why this is so significant, and just showing them some raw JWST image versus a souped up for the public beautiful Hubble image might not create the same impression that it would for an expert. Obviously there’s also an emotional component to something you’ve been working on for years coming to fruition.
Or maybe they really are just that impressive. But they’ll be impressive in 2 weeks, too, when the NASA PR machine feels comfortable releasing them.
Part of the time delay in sharing these images are both in actually processing the images to be good for public consumption, and also thinking about how they’re going to do the outreach to explain to the public what’s so special about them.
First impressions are important. Just admit you’re being impatient and wait a couple of weeks to let them wow the public on their own terms.
Seems like there’s confusion there in need of clarificating.
N9IWP didn’t say that N9IWP was brought to tears, or even nearly so. N9IWP posted a link to an article with a headline saying that the Webb scientists were nearly brought to tears. Upon reading the actual article, it doesn’t even quite say that. One scientist is quoted as saying he nearly cried.
