James Webb Space Telescope

[Replies From View]

Annoying we have to wait so long for this stuff

[imitationleather]

Do Flat Earth people think all this stuff is made up?

[idunnosomename]

im sorry this is the most boring picture i have ever seen

[imitationleather]

im sorry this is the most boring picture i have ever seen

But you've only seen four pictures.

This, Goatse, Tubgirl and the lad's head exploding in Scanners.

[idunnosomename]

alas. this is true

[PlanktonSideburns]

Annoying we have to wait so long for this stuff

Especially as it's from the furthest past that physics can imagine. Talk about a doss!

[PlanktonSideburns]

im sorry this is the most boring picture i have ever seen

Post something better

[idunnosomename]

[PlanktonSideburns]

Ok fine

[TrenterPercenter]

[Zero Gravitas]

im sorry this is the most boring picture i have ever seen

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could expose for every galaxy in frame, they didn't stop to think if they should.

Ohh! This collection of interstellar dust and gas has formed a spiral shape due to gravity and the initial conditions of it's formation.

Ohh! This one has too but this one look more blue.

Ohh! So has this one but due to the restricted field of view you can't make out the gross shape and it looks like curved swathes of gas and dust.

Visible light astronomy is shit for cunts.

[Zero Gravitas]

Annoying we have to wait so long for this stuff

There's a portal for the raw data at https://mast.stsci.edu/portal/Mashup/Clients/Mast/Portal.html with advanced search as 'Mission:JWST', 'Instrument:NIRCAM', 'Product Type:Image' you'd need something like https://sites.google.com/cfa.harvard.edu/saoimageds9 to expose and colour map the data.

[idunnosomename]

i was doing the whole "not another boring space launch!!!!!!" hyperbole from the simpsons really. BUT. i genuinely have become a bit jaded to space stuff, even since the Huygens probe landed on Titan in 2005 and took a picture of a bunch of rocks before dying on its arse. the Russians managed better stuff on Venus in the 70s. hugely disappointed I was. i wasn't even 28!!!

did NASA move away from the spectacular deep space false colour shit that everyone put on their desktop c.2000? because that's bollocks really unless you know how to read it. it's good the james webb is up there at last but it's hardly putting out the iconic images that corrected hubble did from 1993

[NoSleep]

The Giant Magellan Telescope will have four times the spatial resolution and ten times the light collecting area of the James Webb Space Telescope, respectively (10 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope).

According to the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization, during the past few years, the telescope's construction has made substantial progress.

The Giant Magellan Telescope is regarded as the space exploration of the future. The James Webb Space Telescope, which recently wowed the world with its astounding resolution, will be outclassed by this telescope, which will use seven of the largest mirrors in the world to create the most detailed images of the Universe ever captured.

An earth based infrared telescope that outperforms the JWST? Presumably there must be some information that the JWST can reach at the very limits of its field of view that this earthbound telescope cannot. Or did somebody miss a trick?

[TrenterPercenter]

Can I ask a question.

Had an article through to my phone the other day (you know those suggested articles) that said the JWST data is suggesting the Big Bang didn't happen as the galaxies in the past are the same size and smoothness of the galaxies of the present. 

Seems like a big deal if true but I couldn't verify whether this is was legit or not (probably a case of there not yet being an explanation of this phenomenon yet rather than mothballing the whole Big Bang theory).

Any "Super Friends" got any thoughts here?

[Mr_Simnock]

Most of the infrared end of the elctromagnetic spectrum can't be viewed from earth hence the James Webb focusing on that. Anyway the Giant Magellan will be completely over shadowed by europe's extremely large telescope which will have 2.5 times more light gathering power and sharper images on top.

[Replies From View]

which will use seven of the largest mirrors in the world to create the most detailed images of the Universe ever captured.

This makes it sound like they've been scouting for the largest mirrors in the world and gone "we'll take these seven".  MAKE YOUR OWN FUCKIN MIRRORS

[Captain Z]

And that will be rendered hopelessly obsolete by Chile's FOMBS (Fuck Off Mega Bastard Scope), whose mirrors will be so large that God will appear every morning to check his hair in them.

[Alberon]

Can I ask a question.

Had an article through to my phone the other day (you know those suggested articles) that said the JWST data is suggesting the Big Bang didn't happen as the galaxies in the past are the same size and smoothness of the galaxies of the present. 

Seems like a big deal if true but I couldn't verify whether this is was legit or not (probably a case of there not yet being an explanation of this phenomenon yet rather than mothballing the whole Big Bang theory).

Any "Super Friends" got any thoughts here?

The fundamental evidence for the Big Bang is that everything outside of the Local Group of galaxies (which is held together by gravity) is flying away from us. So if you reverse time then it means that everything originated at one point. We've got good models of what happened down to a fraction of a second after the big bang. Before that all the physics we have breaks down.

Now this doesn't mean that our models for the early universe when it was only a few hundred million years old are completely accurate. It's pretty much given that the JWST is going to cause some theories to be rewritten.

A quick google on the 'big bang didn't happen' seems to lead to one guy who's had this theory for thirty years, so I think it's safe to ignore it.

As for the Giant Magellan Telescope what we really want is for something that big to be built on the moon so it doesn't have to look through all that murk of a planetary atmosphere.

[TrenterPercenter]

A quick google on the 'big bang didn't happen' seems to lead to one guy who's had this theory for thirty years, so I think it's safe to ignore it.

Thanks Alberon

This is what I was thinking it is this article/guy https://mindmatters.ai/2022/08/james-webb-space-telescope-shows-big-bang-didnt-happen-wait/

[touchingcloth]

Why don't they just make the biggest possible telescope and have done rather than this constant game of one-upsmanship? Like if they turned Mars into a telescope surely that would be it forever, and we could look for alien peen at the dawn of time.

[Blumf]

Can I ask a question.

Had an article through to my phone the other day (you know those suggested articles) that said the JWST data is suggesting the Big Bang didn't happen as the galaxies in the past are the same size and smoothness of the galaxies of the present.

Bit more to Alberon's post.

Astrophysicists run simulations of the universe to try and figure out how things were in the past. Basically, they set up a start point very close to the 'Big Bang', run the model for billions of simulated years and hope to get out a universe that looks like now. They tweak various bits and pieces and re-run until it matches. So far, the models that give us the closest matches to now have starting points that looked a certain way (small galaxies, say). But now, we're getting a better look at the distant pasts and seeing that things actually don't look like that, which means the models are not correct.

So, it's back to the models to try and figure out what's missing or plain wrong. It could be as easy as the models being too simple; lots of details are smoothed over to help with all the number crunching which, even with big supercomputers, is fucking lots. But it could also be a fundamental misunderstanding of the physics (e.g. the debates around Dark Matter and Dark Energy, MOND, etc.). Expect over the next few decades lots of papers written covering all these possibilities, and more, as the data is raked over. This is the JWST doing it's job perfectly, giving the astrophysics community something to chew over.

What's almost certainly not up for debate is the basic idea of the Big Bang. We have other evidence that supports it (cosmological expansion, the cosmic microwave background surveys (WMAP and Plank)). It truly would be a massive announcement if that were the case, and even if it was, it'd be a while before anybody could say so for sure.

[Mr_Simnock]

Why don't they just make the biggest possible telescope and have done rather than this constant game of one-upsmanship? Like if they turned Mars into a telescope surely that would be it forever, and we could look for alien peen at the dawn of time.

You jest but with radio telescopes they have sort of done that already, remember the kafuffle about the blackhole image? Well that was done by combining radio scopes data from around the world to produce the image, so in a way they actually a scope the size of the world to obtain it.

[TrenterPercenter]

Thanks @Blumf, that explains things nicely.

[badaids]

You jest but with radio telescopes they have sort of done that already, remember the kafuffle about the blackhole image? Well that was done by combining radio scopes data from around the world to produce the image, so in a way they actually a scope the size of the world to obtain it.

There is a technique called baseline interferometry, in which you use information from telescopes very far apart, to emulate a telescope the size of that distance.

As you say you can use telescopes on opposite sides of the globe, or, even more cool, telescopes on opposite sides of the earth's orbit around the sun (e.g. takes images on 1 Jan, and then again on 1 Jul when the earth is half way around its orbit), to produce a scope with a diameter of twice the earths distance from the sun.  I think it works best with radio telescopes from memory.

Taken to extremes you could do the same with telescope on other more than exterior planets, or on opposite side of the solar system.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-long-baseline_interferometry

[Mr_Simnock]

Baseline interferometry is what they used, so long as you have a very accurate time stamp (atomic clocks make this possible) for the data from the dish, distance between them can as much as you like. There are some visible spectrum interferometers, ESO's very large telescope does it sometimes but it is quite limited, it is far far harder to exactly match the light paths of each scope to get a coherent image, you can't use the same technique as you can with radio scopes sadly.

[touchingcloth]

I'm not talking about very long baseline interferometry. I know all about very long baseline interferometry, and it's bollocks.

I'm talking about turning MARS into a telescope.

[Mr_Simnock]

for which bit of the electromagnetic spectrum?

[WhoMe]

I'm not talking about very long baseline interferometry. I know all about very long baseline interferometry, and it's bollocks.

I'm talking about turning MARS into a telescope.

They are looking at using a crater on the moon to measure super stretched early cosmic radio waves, if that tickles your giant telescopic fancy

LCRT

[touchingcloth]

They should skip to the Mars thing. That's my whole point, just skip the increments. Go big or phone home.