High cost astronomy

[Catsumi]

Gasp! Does anyone else see the image of a skeletized humanoid looking upward in the top 1/3 of photo.? It looks so primaland so alone. Sends shivers down my spine.

[Sonny Taylor]

Just or fun Catsumi, (I have great respect for your posts); Your vision appears to be a funny thing, technically known as "Pareidolia". Wikipedia:

the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one sees an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none.

I've got a few of my own. This is an expansion of the lower left piece of the JWST image. Looks like some kind of mad-dog threatening something incoming.

maddog.png

And this is the mad-otter from the older Hubble image.

madotter.png

As for "Pareidolia", maybe I'm just getting old or crazy, but I've sometimes sensed things audible in ordinary white furnace noise that weren't real upon investigation. Same kinda thing I think.

[Babba_not_Gump]

Do you remember "The Pillars of Creation" picture from Hubble taken in 1995? JWST has now imaged the same region

If your computer has lots of RAM and processor muscle , and you have good internet speed, you can take a look at this extremely detailed picture:

https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01GFNMZESKZ ... E0Z19G.png

It may take some seconds to load, but if you click on part of the picture, the amount of detail is stunning. I won't try to embed it here in the thread; it's too big. If you computer is somewhat less than "loaded for bear", you can probably still check out the link, though it will be slow to load and slow when you click on part of it to expand.

I pulled it up on my computer.
What are all those little lights? Stars? Galaxies?

It's incredible but also difficult to put it all into perspective. For instance, how big of an area are we looking at?

[Catsumi]

Some of us artistic types, especially, seek known images in an otherwise confusing disorganized background.

Ever look at heavily applied stucco on a ceiling for awhile? You’ll find plenty of images there.

[Babba_not_Gump]

Some of us artistic types, especially, seek known images in an otherwise confusing disorganized background.

Ever look at heavily applied stucco on a ceiling for awhile? You’ll find plenty of images there.

I've tried that but then everything starts spinning.

[Sonny Taylor]

I pulled it up on my computer.
What are all those little lights? Stars? Galaxies?

It's incredible but also difficult to put it all into perspective. For instance, how big of an area are we looking at?

The image is about 8 light years across; roughly twice the distance from The Sun to our nearest neighbor stars in the Alpha-Centauri system.

I should have posted this link earlier; it's the source of the image link I posted and there are details about the image here...

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/medi ... 89NTFJW8VM

[Sonny Taylor]

I pulled it up on my computer.
What are all those little lights? Stars? Galaxies?

It's incredible but also difficult to put it all into perspective. For instance, how big of an area are we looking at?

You did mention Galaxies, so I looked at the image in detail; expanding many parts of it. I couldn't see what looked like a background galaxy anywhere I detailed. That seemed strange given that many Webb (and Hubble) images show many background Galaxies.

So, reading the text from the link; it says this:

Although it may appear that near-infrared light has allowed Webb to “pierce through” the background to reveal great cosmic distances beyond the pillars, the interstellar medium stands in the way, like a drawn curtain.

This is also the reason why there are no distant galaxies in this view. This translucent layer of gas blocks our view of the deeper universe. Plus, dust is lit up by the collective light from the packed “party” of stars that have burst free from the pillars. It’s like standing in a well-lit room looking out a window – the interior light reflects on the pane, obscuring the scene outside and, in turn, illuminating the activity at the party inside.

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/medi ... 89NTFJW8VM

Can you imagine the night sky looking out from another planet Earth placed somewhere in the Eagle nebula?

This bird's huge. The pillars you see in the Hubble and Webb images are in the lower centre of this wider image of the nebula, I'm guessing 40+ light years across:

[Babba_not_Gump]

Thanks for the clarification, dust be damned, Sonny Taylor.

[Sonny Taylor]

Even if you were on a planet super close to the eagle nebula, it would appear as a barely visible white haze if visible at all.

True, but I was thinking more about the star fields visible, given their density in the region (rather than something like the depiction of the Motara nebula in Star Trek's "The wrath of Kahn".

[Sonny Taylor]

oldtrucker: I still can't find any definitive information (nor images) derived from JWST of Trappist 1. You got me curious previously, but every thing I find still seems "airy-fairy" with no details of individual planets or the rest of the system. Perhaps what's been found has scientific significance, but I haven't found it very inspiring.

Your desire for Trappist 1 information brings me to another object that I'd like JWST to image. That would be the Galaxy NGC-1300.



If you want more detail, click the link below and click on the picture to expand...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... GC1300.jpg

It's about 61 million years distant and half the diameter as our own Milky Way Galaxy (it's about 110,000 light years across), but I find it's structure very curious. A big bar and two clearly defined spiral arms.

If you click the link above (it's big) and click the centre of the galaxy you can see the secondary spiral structure in the middle of it all.

Image and information are from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_1300

I just wish there was more information about how such a structure evolved over billions of years.

[Sonny Taylor]

And oh yeah... you can see many background galaxies behind NGC-1300 in the expanded image (even in the image above really). This is of course a Hubble image.

[JagXKR]

Most galaxies, aprx 60%, are Spirals. Of those roughly 2/3 are Barred Spirals. So the largest number of galaxies, of the 4 main types, are Barred. Our Milky Way is a Barred Spiral.
https://esahubble.org/wordbank/spiral-galaxy/
Even Andromeda is a Barred Spiral. Spitzer showed us that visible light does not always tell the whole story. Originally classified as a Spiral, Spitzer showed it to be a Barred.
These are different from my avatar, M101 Pinwheel Galaxy. It being a Spiral. Tidal forces from nearby galaxies making it asymmetrical.

[Sonny Taylor]

Most galaxies, aprx 60%, are Spirals. Of those roughly 2/3 are Barred Spirals. So the largest number of galaxies, of the 4 main types, are Barred. Our Milky Way is a Barred Spiral.
https://esahubble.org/wordbank/spiral-galaxy/
Even Andromeda is a Barred Spiral. Spitzer showed us that visible light does not always tell the whole story. Originally classified as a Spiral, Spitzer showed it to be a Barred.
These are different from my avatar, M101 Pinwheel Galaxy. It being a Spiral. Tidal forces from nearby galaxies making it asymmetrical.

Yeah, I'm with you. Even the LMC (large Magellanic Cloud) is considered to be a (disrupted) barred spiral.

The LMC is classified as a Magellanic spiral. It contains a stellar bar that is geometrically off center, suggesting that it was a barred dwarf spiral galaxy before its spiral arms were disrupted, likely by tidal interactions from the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and the Milky Way's gravity.

It's disturbed barred spiral appearance is visible:



What intrigues me in particular with galaxy NGC-1300 is it's almost perfect symmetrical shape, two clear spiral arms, a seriously well defined bar and secondary spiral nucleus in the centre of the bar. Not to mention the huge blue star clusters visible in the spiral arms.

Again (many times larger than the LMC above for those who don't know):

[Babba_not_Gump]

Here's an interesting discovery.

Planet 120 light years from Earth may be covered in water and have potential for life: NASA
‌The discovery of dimethyl sulphide is especially intriguing because it is a molecule that is only produced by life on Earth, and is mostly emitted in marine environments
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/pla ... adlineNews

One day we'll find it.