Main Menu

Science is Drokking Fantastic Because...

Started by The Legendary Shark, 21 July, 2011, 11:05:57 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Definitely Not Mister Pops

Paralysed man with severed spine walks thanks to implant

Every so often I get a wee reminder that we are, in fact, living in the future.
You may quote me on that.

Definitely Not Mister Pops

2MASS J17554042+6551277 is a completely unremarkable star. I'm not sure it's even visible to the naked eye, but if it is, just barely. It does have an entry in wikipedia now, because it was what the James Webb telescope pointed at to get its mirrors all nice and aligned. To achieve alignment, the tolerances have to be less than the wavelength of infrared light so all the mirrors are reflecting in phase to the receiver. Otherwise you just get a bunch of images from smaller mirrors superimposed on top of one another. But now, instead of 18 small mirror telescopes, there's one big one. It took a picture of 2MASS J17554042+6551277, and this is what NASA released*:




Those six big spikes are optical artifacts, it's essentially like lens-flare, but replace lens with 18-perfectly-aligned-mirrors. So 18-perfectly-aligned-mirrors-flare. The JWST is so sensitve, it's getting glare off a barely visible star. This won't be as much of a problem when the JWST starts its serious work, 2MASS J1blahblah is only** ~2000 light years away, so much closer than the stuff JWST is going to study.

The truly remarkable thing is when you zoom in on those points of light behind 2MASSandsoforth.



Those are galaxies! Without meaning to or even trying, this thing is capturing pictures of galaxies!

And they still haven't even released the full resolution/data-set image because they're still perfecting the callibration and resolution***. Not to get too technical, but I believe they still have to de-sprongle the widgets and reverse the polarity of the sprockets.

*link to APOD's much larger image.
**in cosmological terms
***and NASA has been stung before by the tin-foil behatted extrapolating nonsense from slightly blurry images.
You may quote me on that.

paddykafka

A line that cries out to be roared in desperation by TOS Scotty:

"It's nae use Captain! Ah'm gonnae have tae de-sprongle the widgets and reverse the polarity of the sprockets!"

(Thanks for the post, Mister Pops. It really will be fascinating to see what new images and info await us, courtesy of this technology.)


The Legendary Shark


Ah, the dichotomy of humanity - that we can see such soaring beauty whilst mired in such abyssal ugliness.

[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]





Hawkmumbler

Have they tried turning them off and on again?

sheridan

computer read-outs on contact lenses (couldn't quite work out if it was a concept, prototype or really exists yet).

The Legendary Shark

Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 20 May, 2022, 02:33:25 PM
Have they tried turning them off and on again?

:D

I imagine the on/off button is pretty hard to reach right now...

[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




Definitely Not Mister Pops

You may quote me on that.

Definitely Not Mister Pops

This is more pure maths than science, but in honour of the current Prime Minister of England, I thought I'd share 3Blue1Brown's latest video on How to Lie Using Visual Examples
You may quote me on that.


JayzusB.Christ

The zooming-out version here.  And all this could be stuffed into a little pyramid in Peter St John's desk.
https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2022/07/12/that-james-webb-telescope-picture-was-awesome-but-wait-until-zoom-out/
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

Hawkmumbler

Man, i'm glad the universe is made out of coach seat upholstery.

Thanks Nasa.

JayzusB.Christ

"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

Definitely Not Mister Pops

I would compare it to a Wetherspoons' carpet, but to each their own.

There's looks like a lot of gravitational lensing going on there. A lot of hints at structure beyond my ken.
You may quote me on that.