The telescope is a magnificent achievement. To call its ‘big reveal’ a colossal disappointment is an understatement. Two stammering, stumbling old guys mumbling in front of an image you could barely see. This is NASA PR at its finest?
They took the president’s time and announced a national press release with some fanfare. This is what they gave out. Disgraceful.
Would you like to post a link of your disappointment?
Sorry.
OK, “boring” in the sense that it looks like any other picture of the cosmos but it’s way f’n cool when you put it into context. We’re seeing galaxies we’ve never seen before! Not stars, but entire galaxies!
What were you expecting if you don’t mind me asking?
This was an image of galaxies from 600 million years after the Big Bang. I think that’s awesome.
My wife and I hurried home from shopping so we could see the images. We then waited and waited until they finally got it rolling…and there was one picture. I expected a bit more considering the buildup. It’s a great picture, though. We’re looking forward to more when they have them. Just the thought that you’re seeing over 13 billion years into the past is pretty exciting.
I guess I didn’t catch the buildup or fanfare to all of this, and I have the luxury of fast forwarding, but I think it’s pretty f’ing cool. A full-screen shot with black borders for at least a bit would have been nice, though.
A more articulate, engaging explanation. Think Carl Sagan, Neil Degrasse Tyson, or Bill Nye. Science is being denigrated every day by antivaxers, right wing conspiracy folks, and the like. Many people ask why we should spend money on Space at all. This was a chance to have a strong PR moment. Think the ‘Pillars of Creation’ news release, for example. It was a wasted opportunity.
Could that presser have been any duller? Zero excitement from anyone in there. White House should have left the reveal to NASA. The explanations would have been better and the excitement would have been much higher.
As an aside Bill Nelson is a ghoul from Fallout 3. He makes JB seems like a young buck.
ETA: Though I guess leaving it to NASA wouldn’t have saved us from the crypt keeper. Should have let someone with some energy deliver it though.
Nothing wrong with pimping it out a bit, but the awesome majesty of the cosmos is not enough for you? A picture is supposed to be worth 1000 words, and all that. You could add 1000 words about infrared spectroscopy, but I am sure I already saw descriptions of all the instruments on the NASA web pages.
IMO NASA should leave politics out of it and not involve the White House for such things
But this is all they promised for today; one image as a preview for tomorrow’s release of (I think six) additional images.
It’s a sorry state for our country when our achievements are judged by the publicity and gratification.
Without the words, it’s no more impressive than a cardboard tube and a prism.
Can’t wait! My wife made it a desktop image for the computer we have connected to the big screen. We’ve been discussing it off and on since. When you look at it at that size, every time you look at it you see something new.
The gravitational lensing is very cool.
Yeah, I was disappointed by today’s show. I thought they might show several more pics. They didn’t really show any very clearly, just told us about the one pic and we had to click on some other page to actually see the pic. I expected they’d have some techno/educational discussion at some level at least.
Now I wonder what we will see tomorrow. Just a bunch of still pics? Panel discussions or lectures by scientists (or science journalists) discussing the pics? Will it be some kind of public educational show or just pics? Will there be circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is?
I thought we might see at least a little teaser of that today.
I have two strong conflicting feelings about this.
On one hand, this image is a scientific wonder and an awesome technological achievement. It demonstrates the ability of the JWST to focus on an incredibly tiny area of sky (in terms of angular area) where we would normally see nothing at all, and to tease out of it a sharp image of thousands of extremely distant galaxies from 13 billion years ago, galaxies that are not just unimaginably far away in space and time, but receding from us so fast that their very images have been red-shifted into oblivion. One of the most celebrated achievements of the Hubble telescope was its ultra-deep field image, but this one was far more sensitive and was achieved much faster and more easily, portending great discoveries to come.
Where I agree with the OP is that this was poorly presented, something that hopefully will be remedied tomorrow when actual scientists do the presentation.
The image itself is phenomenal.
The presentation of the image leaves something to be desired. Especially since some of the things that make the image so phenomenal are only apparent to those well-versed in the relevant fields. If you’re giving a general-public presentation, you need to explain those things well.
Here’s an interesting comparison of the same patch of sky as imaged by the Hubble telescope and the Webb
Very much seconded.
In the Guardian images that CalMeacham just linked: Some of the galaxies look bluish and some look reddish. Is that as straightforward as the reddish ones are moving away from Earth while the blue ones are moving toward Earth? IOW, the noted red-shift and it’s less-noted cousin, the blue-shift?