Posted on 07/22/2022 11:01:35 AM PDT by Red Badger
It hasn't even been a fortnight since the first image release, and the James Webb Space Telescope is just continuously knocking all our socks off.
Only a few images have been officially released, but that hasn't stopped citizen scientists digging through the raw data to see what they can find.
One of those is Judy Schmidt, who has been processing raw space data into breathtaking images for years. Courtesy of her painstaking work, we now have absolutely jaw-dropping images of two spectacular spiral galaxies.
The first is NGC 628, also known as the Phantom Galaxy. The other is NGC 7496. Both are relatively close to the Milky Way, and both are the subject of ongoing observations as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) survey, to better chart the connections between young stars and the clouds of cold molecular gas that give birth to them.
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Webb's new image of NGC 628. (Judy Schmidt/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
Contributing to PHANGS is one of Webb's early assignments, and already the images show that the newly deployed space telescope is very much worth the hype.
NGC 628 is one of the more spectacular kinds of galaxies in our sky. It's what is known as a "grand design" spiral galaxy: one with prominent, well-formed, and relatively unobscured arms. And, at just 32 million light-years away, it's close enough to provide plenty of detail for study.
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Hubble image of NGC 628 released in 2007. (NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration)
Previous observations have revealed that the galaxy's spiral arms are rich with star-forming gas seeded with young and emerging stars. Astronomers have also observed at least three supernovae in NGC 628 since the turn of the millennium.
NGC 7496, located a mere 24 million light-years away, is what is known as a barred spiral galaxy, with spiral arms extending from a distinct bar that crosses the center of the galaxy. This is thought to be the result of uneven density in the galactic disk; the denser region pulls stars towards it to create bars.
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Webb's new view of NGC 7496. (Judy Schmidt/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
These bars are thought to be regions of rich star formation as gas is channeled inward towards their centers. A beautiful barred spiral like NGC 7496 that is clearly visible is therefore an excellent laboratory for studying how stars are born.
You'll notice that Webb's images are very different from those of Hubble – and that's a good thing. The two telescopes operate in different light regimes. Hubble is primarily an optical and ultraviolet instrument, while Webb sees in infrared, which can capture light obscured by dust and gas in optical wavelengths. This means that the observations are complementary; Hubble picks up the gas, and Webb can see the newborn stars inside it.
As explained by astronomer David Thilker of Johns Hopkins University, "We're going to clearly see star clusters in the hearts of these dense molecular clouds that before we only had indirect evidence of. Webb gives us a way to look inside these 'star factories' to see the freshly assembled star clusters and measure their properties before they evolve."
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A Hubble image of NGC 7496 released earlier this year. (ESA/Hubble & NASA/J. Lee/the PHANGS-HST Team/Judy Schmidt)
As you can see by comparing the images, Webb still picks up the glowing gas, but shows much more detail. In Hubble's images, the galactic nuclei are just a bright, featureless glow; Webb cuts through and shows much greater detail about what's happening in the space around the supermassive black holes around which the galaxies revolve.
We're standing at the precipice of a bold new era of space science. Already Webb seems to have identified a galaxy at a record-breaking distance, the earliest ever discovered. The papers are coming thick and fast on arXiv. Now these new images are some of the most detailed infrared views we've ever seen of spiral galaxies.
Scientists are yet to perform an analysis; we'll be waiting in hot anticipation of what Webb's data will reveal. Meanwhile, we're content to revel in the extreme pretty.
The new images are available on Schmidt's Flickr page, where you can download them in high resolution.
Pick any picture, then pick the smallest pinpoint of light that you can see. That is a sun, maybe like our sun, maybe with planets like our sun. Maybe on one of those planets there is a an Earth-like form of life.
No matter how big you physically are, it is humbling to consider how minuscule each individual is compared to the size and distances portrayed by these photos.
Considering the number of suns out there, the possibility that we are the only form of intelligent life in the universe is ridiculously small and somewhat terrifying at the same time.
Because if it is true that we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy, it is scary that about half of the population are democrats and muslims both of whom seek enslavement or a permanent end to the rest of us.
Author is a female.......................
Is that a view of Uranus?
I wonder how much they’ve been enhanced before publishing.
For DUST thou art and unto DUST thou shall return. - Genesis 3:19
There is an astronomy buff that takes photos through his telescope. He had some unedited photos that still look pretty cool with colors, etc.
The Webb images are from electromagnetic(?) devices that are “seeing” wavelengths that are not all visible to the human eye, so the various wavelengths are represented by a color that we can see.
I imagine that they have the raw data (wavelengths referenced to color) and then enhanced images where they run the data through the computer to smooth it, enhance it, etc.
The whole thing for our benefit? I would think it’d be a touch conceited for us to be the only ones. Dunno, guess we’ll find out later.
Reminds me of a certain Vincent Van Gogh painting.
I don’t know if it’s necessarily conceited. I think the Universe, including ourselves, were created for God’s delight.
Why did it take so long? They’re saying the oldest galaxy is like 13.5 billion years old. How old is God then?
Trillions.
“Going to take a lot of space for redeemed mankind to live an eternity...”
Interesting thought. And who knows how God will make eternity work? Not me!
But all of us tend to have a hard time conceptualizing how much space is needed for things. When my oldest son was in 6th grade, his teacher told the class that there would soon be too many people on Earth and we’d have no space. I constructed and sent her a spreadsheet which showed that if we divided Texas (dry land only) into typical classrooms, 7 billion people divided into families of four could all fit with (I forget) 70-80% of the classrooms empty. And that’s just one level with no upstairs...
Back to the eternity comment, as far as New Jerusalem goes, it will have plenty of room for all of God’s saved. But I imagine, like you, that we could be going in and out and doing a lot of traveling if we want! I’d kinda like to see other galaxies.
Here are the famous Hubbell and Webb images of a 'blank' section of sky, the size of a GRAIN OF SAND HELD AT ARM'S LENGTH. Every little smudge you see in BOTH images is a galaxy with billions of stars. The Hubbell image took many days to make with the lens open and pointing at nothing. The Webb image is taken in infrared and Hubbell could not see them. All this from two tiny points of the sky. Now multiply these images by millions of tiny points!...............................GOD MADE ALL THIS FOR US TO EXPLORE!.................
JWST is sensitive to wavelengths between .6 micron and 28.5 micron. “Visible light” refers to wavelengths between 0.4 and 0.78 micron (approximately). For reference, HST is sensitive to wavelengths between 0.1 micron and 1.8 micron. The two observatories are complementary. Both telescopes measure mostly light which is not detectable by the human eye.
“Light” ( whether ultraviolet, visible, or infrared) is focused by the telescope onto an array of electronic detectors, to record an image. The array of sensors is known as a “focal plane array” (FPA). Filters are used to select a relatively narrow range of wavelengths for each image. Unmodified, with the data from those detectors scaled to “brightness” on your computer monitor, would produce a grayscale (black&white) image. To render the data scientifically useful, they are processed to compensate for known (as in measured) irregularities in the FPA. The color images NASA releases are produced by assigning three selected non-visible wavelength images to red, green, and blue.
Some people describe these images as “computer generated”. They’re wrong. CGI refers to visualization of “data” artificially generated within a computer, with no reference out to the real world. JWST imagery (and similar, including the camera on your cellphone) are visualizations of data generated and measured naturally in the real world. A film camera does exactly the same thing, using chemical rather than electronic processes.
You cellphone camera produces color images by putting a pattern of red, green, and blue microscopic filters in front of an FPA sensitive to visible light. It’s called a “Bayer Filter”, and the Wikipedia page does a good job of explaining how it works.
You’re joking, right? Time was created by God, too.
That’s my hubby’s avocation, i.e., astrophotography. The purists hold great contempt for the manipulation of images to make them too “purdy”.
Smoothing raw TIFF files is one thing. NASA takes their little crayons to the pics. They are gorgeous; just not real. Kind of like airbrushing models’ bodies.
“The heavens declare the glory of God”. We humans are mostly not listening.
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