NASA's Webb Takes Star-Filled Portrait of Pillars of Creation (nasa.gov) 29
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured a lush, highly detailed landscape -- the iconic Pillars of Creation -- where new stars are forming within dense clouds of gas and dust. From NASA: The three-dimensional pillars look like majestic rock formations, but are far more permeable. These columns are made up of cool interstellar gas and dust that appear -- at times -- semi-transparent in near-infrared light. Webb's new view of the Pillars of Creation, which were first made famous when imaged by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, will help researchers revamp their models of star formation by identifying far more precise counts of newly formed stars, along with the quantities of gas and dust in the region. Over time, they will begin to build a clearer understanding of how stars form and burst out of these dusty clouds over millions of years.
Newly formed stars are the scene-stealers in this image from Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). These are the bright red orbs that typically have diffraction spikes and lie outside one of the dusty pillars. When knots with sufficient mass form within the pillars of gas and dust, they begin to collapse under their own gravity, slowly heat up, and eventually form new stars. What about those wavy lines that look like lava at the edges of some pillars? These are ejections from stars that are still forming within the gas and dust. Young stars periodically shoot out supersonic jets that collide with clouds of material, like these thick pillars. This sometimes also results in bow shocks, which can form wavy patterns like a boat does as it moves through water. The crimson glow comes from the energetic hydrogen molecules that result from jets and shocks. This is evident in the second and third pillars from the top -- the NIRCam image is practically pulsing with their activity. These young stars are estimated to be only a few hundred thousand years old.
Although it may appear that near-infrared light has allowed Webb to "pierce through" the clouds to reveal great cosmic distances beyond the pillars, there are no galaxies in this view. Instead, a mix of translucent gas and dust known as the interstellar medium in the densest part of our Milky Way galaxy's disk blocks our view of the deeper universe. This scene was first imaged by Hubble in 1995 and revisited in 2014, but many other observatories have also stared deeply at this region. Each advanced instrument offers researchers new details about this region, which is practically overflowing with stars. This tightly cropped image is set within the vast Eagle Nebula, which lies 6,500 light-years away.
Newly formed stars are the scene-stealers in this image from Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). These are the bright red orbs that typically have diffraction spikes and lie outside one of the dusty pillars. When knots with sufficient mass form within the pillars of gas and dust, they begin to collapse under their own gravity, slowly heat up, and eventually form new stars. What about those wavy lines that look like lava at the edges of some pillars? These are ejections from stars that are still forming within the gas and dust. Young stars periodically shoot out supersonic jets that collide with clouds of material, like these thick pillars. This sometimes also results in bow shocks, which can form wavy patterns like a boat does as it moves through water. The crimson glow comes from the energetic hydrogen molecules that result from jets and shocks. This is evident in the second and third pillars from the top -- the NIRCam image is practically pulsing with their activity. These young stars are estimated to be only a few hundred thousand years old.
Although it may appear that near-infrared light has allowed Webb to "pierce through" the clouds to reveal great cosmic distances beyond the pillars, there are no galaxies in this view. Instead, a mix of translucent gas and dust known as the interstellar medium in the densest part of our Milky Way galaxy's disk blocks our view of the deeper universe. This scene was first imaged by Hubble in 1995 and revisited in 2014, but many other observatories have also stared deeply at this region. Each advanced instrument offers researchers new details about this region, which is practically overflowing with stars. This tightly cropped image is set within the vast Eagle Nebula, which lies 6,500 light-years away.
One of my favorite regions of space to picture (Score:5, Insightful)
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You tell me!
The image looks like a picture of Godzilla so it reminds me of the picture of the of a slice of sausage that other JWST contributor posted as a hoax recently..
It's kind of like they were saying "Sorry, the mission is top secret" and like we aren't going to get anything useful related to what they are really looking after. /s
So weird that it might no longer even be there. (Score:3)
But at What Cost? (Score:3)
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/g... [nasa.gov]
Infrared seems to have greatly de-emphasized the dick and balls in the corner.
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$10 billion dollars and totally worth it.
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Well, $10B over 24 years, so... $411M a year?
Even the raw number seems reasonable when the goal is the advancement of human knowledge and understanding in a mostly pure way. Far more has been spent for far less.
Wonderful new Slashdot feature! (Score:3)
Slashdot: some pointy-haired manager is having bright ideas. I have an ad-blocker *and* I have ticked "Ads Disabled".
A wonderful new feature! I see ads anyway! Both in the right-hand column and interspersed in the stories! Wow, thanks!
/s
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Never seen an ad on Slashdot. I have NoScript and ABP for reference. Also high Karma which might help, or not, I have no idea.
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Slashdot: some pointy-haired manager is having bright ideas. I have an ad-blocker *and* I have ticked "Ads Disabled".
A wonderful new feature! I see ads anyway! Both in the right-hand column and interspersed in the stories! Wow, thanks!
/s
Not only that, I found many functions are now broken. E.g. when I expand abbreviated or hidden posts by clicking them, it will just hang. The bar that can used to set the score for posts to be abbreviated or hidden is now gone.
Yes, I have an ad-blocker. If blocking ads make this site useless, then so be it. Just like the previous beta, I will just go elsewhere until some day, maybe, they rollback all changes.
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Not only that, I found many functions are now broken. E.g. when I expand abbreviated or hidden posts by clicking them, it will just hang. The bar that can used to set the score for posts to be abbreviated or hidden is now gone.
Thanks for confirming my experience. It also seems that the page fails to refresh completely after submitting a post (like here) so the post isn't shown (manually refreshing works). I only noticed this recently after upgrading Firefox to 106.0.1 (using uBO, uM and PB) and initially thought it was a browser issue, but disabling Extensions and/or reverting to 105.0.3 didn't help, so then guessed something had changed on /.
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Just noting that these now appear to be appearing/working again.
'Photo-Shopped' (Score:3)
These images are so heavily post-processed they are as good as photo-shopped, images looking better than before could simply be because somebody did a better job of manually making tons of adjustments to make the picture look better. The Images are in near infra-red so all colors that you see in the image are fake, the six-pronged sparkle can be filtered out AFAIK but here it's clearly left in for visual effect - prettiness.
A fair comparison would be to show unfiltered images without unnecessary post-processing or colorization.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] "Can I process the JWST data better than NASA?"
Re: 'Photo-Shopped' (Score:3)
All true, but so what? Hubble was no different. Most images go to scientists. It's nice that they spend a bit of time adding false colors, so that the rest of us also have something to look at.
tl;dr: It's called public relations.
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So, I'd rather see something scientific like a side-by-side of the new and old photos with only the processing needed to make the images visible, showing 2 images that have both had different levels of photo-shopping is a bit meaningless.
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Agreed. While the fantasy plays out great when we watch it on star trek viewscreens, it's nice to make it clear that filters are being used, and that those filters can be maximal or minimal.
I'm afraid that the ease of this manipulation, and the general ignorance about just how significant it is, is leading to a world where deep fakes are "truer than truth".
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Since the source [webbtelescope.org] of that statement is NASA, on a page where they list exactly the filters/colors used to create the image, I am guessing they are well aware that the colors are artificial. However, "the bright 4.8 micron orbs" doesn't sound too interesting does it? It also does not correspond to anything you see in the image (which shows that wavelength as red).
Re:'Photo-Shopped' (Score:5, Funny)
You bet. Here you go, no false colouring:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
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The photos are not 'heavily post-processed' (at least not any more than regular digital photography). The NIRCAM has multiple filters for different wavelengths of infrared (analogous to the red/green/blue filters used for visible light photography). Each filter results in a grayscale image (same as any other digital photography). In regular photography those grayscale images are displayed with color corresponding to the color of the filter. It would make zero sense to do that here, because we can't see
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The colouring isn't frivolous. Sure, it's pleasing. But it's not just invented from whole cloth by some uninformed graphic artist. The differences hues, shades, and intensities have actual meaning, and there's value there. They drag the spectrum into our visible range. To imply that's somehow dishonest is a little ridiculous.
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Exactly why colors shouldn't be added, because the colors could just as easily mislead, many people don't even realise they're looking at a colored image, they think it's a photo, a black and white image is a more honest representation.
If those hues, shades and intensities have actual meaning then tell me, what exactly is that meaning? Because to me those colors look like they have been chosen to look pretty.
Those colors don't tell me anything interesting such as what are the chemical elements of the dust
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You do realize that the instrument used captures infrared light, which we can't see, don't you? The colors represent various wavelengths of infrared light, shifted to something we can see. Yeah, to us they look pretty, but to the actual scientists studying them they have meaning. Otherwise they would not have put an infrared camera with various filters for different wavelengths up there.
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No, they're just colors unless you have some actual evidence for your 100% assumption.
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I already provided that information, and a link to the source, a few posts up. For instance, the red color is from an exposure with the F470N filter on the camera. A very easy search shows the F470N filter is a very narrow filter at 4.7 microns.
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I wonder if you'd eschew the use of a backup camera in a car since the overexposed and excessively lighted scene your viewing is clearly not indicative of what the street looks like at night.
Re:Cool. But when does the SLS launch? (Score:5, Insightful)
SLS did its job. Being launched wasn't one of its jobs.
Comparison to Hubbles NIR image (Score:5, Interesting)
In addition the Hubbles awesome visible image, in 2014 it also took a near IR version (1.1-1.5 micron filters) that looks similarly transparent.
https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01... [stsci-opo.org]
The JWST image covers more of the NIR, using filters spanning 900 nm - 4.7 micron