Yeah, that’s a huge difference. Probably a combination of a big mirror, more sensitive cameras in near IR, and newer electronics with less noise and more sensitivity overall.
I am most excited to see the spectra of the exoplanet tomorrow, to see just what kind of spectral resolution they are getting.
(That quote is from squeegee’s link, not squeegee themself)
How fucking smart do you have to be to even think something like that up? “Hey, let’s use gravity distortion from bajillions of miles away to create a Space Lens, letting us see even more bajillions of miles away!”
If you’re like me, this JWST image puts into perspective our small place in the universe. Though humbling, it instills a sense of awe in the sheer vastness and complexity of deep space. It’s one thing to know that there’s an astronomically large number of galaxies in the universe, but seeing it in fine detail makes it real. It hits you on an emotional level—an existential level.
Most of those dots represent a galaxy, each containing tens to hundreds of billions of stars and planets, many of which could potentially harbor life. The odds of there not being life on some of them must be incredibly small to minuscule. Likewise, the odds of there not being advanced civilizations on some must also be minuscule. If that’s the case then this sand-at-arms-length view that we’re looking at in fine detail must contain intelligent beings that are looking at us as a small dot of a galaxy. And that’s just a tiny fraction of the universe at large. It’s enough to boggle your mind. One might even call it awesome.
Yea, it’s hard to put into words what we’re visualizing. Our own world is unimaginably small and insignificant. Each of those galaxies are unimaginably vast, while we gaze out from our own unimaginably vast galaxy. Oh, and they’re moving. We all are.
Oh yeah, my wife mulled about the possibility of us not being alone with regard to the vastness that image represented. I replied with the aged saw that it implied that we almost assuredly aren’t alone, but finding out where and when our companions might exist will be very difficult, and meeting up even more difficult still.
Either way, you gotta try. What Hank Williams is to Neil Armstrong, what would you be if you didn’t even try?
Am I right in assuming that all the six-pointed objects in the JWST image (which are all four-pointed in the Hubble image) are seriously over-exposed relative to the rest, and that the points are artifacts of the sensors?
Those are individual stars in our own galaxy. The points are diffraction artifacts, six of them due to the hexagonal shape of the mirror segments. Or something like that.
As an average Joe, I now wonder what I was being so eager about earlier. I saw the picture they showed at the press conference yesterday and was, if not disappointed, then somewhat underwhelmed. So much for pretty pictures. It seems Hubble took cooler looking pictures (e.g. the Pillars of Creation). At this point we should let the scientists do their thing and tell us what to believe about the universe later on, unless, of course one actually knows how to interpret raw data and draw ones own conclusions about how the universe developed.
Far more likely, they aren’t looking at us, because we’re just one tiny insignificant speck on their sky out of umteen-zillion such tiny specs, and there are only so many specks they can point their scopes at.
@Cardigan , I was far more awed by this picture than I was by the Pillars of Creation. But it’s true that the awe in this picture is of a sort that needs a lot more explanation, for the layman. They could have done a much better job of the explanation around the picture.
They did an incredibly poor job of demonstrating to anyone who wasn’t already a big space nerd why JWST was so much better than Hubble. A complete failure of the PR departments. I can only guess/hope that they have a good presentation lined up for the main reveal (in about a half hour) where they do a much better job of it.
No, it will pretty much be a probe per star system that we want to look at. But, it only needs to be a 1 meter telescope, and it doesn’t need to slow down when it gets there, as it actually gets better resolution as it gets farther away.
But if it’s on time I’m impressed, especially after yesterday’s extended delay. What did Biden say? It was delayed because he was preparing for a Middle East visit? It was a long delay, on the order of a half hour.
