James Webb Telescope - new releases

Going to be honest here - although the science was great, the presentation was too shortsighted imo. I think they disappointed quite a few of the more general public.

Death of a star is too familiar already (near infrared version) thanks to the famous similar-looking pic.
The Exoplanet was supposed to include an actual pic, never happened. Just a few pixels maybe and so got dumped?

And I'm sure we can't expect production quality video broadcasts from peeps not dedicated to that, but what a mess (see for yourself, link in post 63 above). Loss of sound or too poor to hear, late switchovers, lost linkups, soundtrack way out, wrong slide presentations...

Anyway, Webb will still deliver.
 

What's next for Webb?​

With the first stunning images unveiled, what comes next for the James Webb Space Telescope? Scientists have promised that more observations will pour out from the mission this week, including the first images of Jupiter, due on Thursday (July 14).

Meanwhile, the telescope is digging into both its early science suite and its first year projects. But scientists are already looking ahead the observatory's second year, which begins next summer, since the telescope is out-performing the expectations researchers planned this year's work around. Read more>
 
eye_suc said:
How do you mean it was supposed to include an actual pic? Did they advertise it as such?
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Yep. I think in their Webb blog, more than once.

eye_suc said:
The angular size of Proxima Centauri (our closest neighbour) is about 1 milliarcseconds which is

www.eso.org

How Small are Small Stars Really? - VLT Interferometer Measures the Size of Proxima Centauri and Other Nearby Stars

At a distance of only 4.2 light-years, Proxima Centauri is the nearest star to the Sun currently known [2]. It is visible as an 11-magnitude object in the southern constellation of Centaurus and is the faintest member of a triple system, together with Alpha Centauri, the brightest (double) star...
www.eso.org www.eso.org

The size of a planet relative to that would be atomic. If we have a hope of imaging exoplanets properly we would probably need to use something like the Event Horizon Telescope. Or something with an even greater angular resolution. The EHT has achieved a resolution of better than 60 microarcseconds (about the angular size of an orange on the moon).
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I was also surprised, but there are a few very low res pics already - I saw the first one taken by Hubble sometime, saw it this week, and another announcing it's the first to show 2 planets.

eye_suc said:
Anywho, more images to come!
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:thumbsup:
 
eye_suc said:
faaaaaarkinhelll. Ok if Hubble can do it surely we should be able to see better detail from JWST. Perhaps that process just takes longer.
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Found the better one, should get our appetites going ;- )


eso2011a.jpg


This image, captured by the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, shows the star TYC 8998-760-1 accompanied by two giant exoplanets. This is the first time astronomers have directly observed more than one planet orbiting a star similar to the Sun.

The image was captured by blocking the light from the young, Sun-like star (on the top left corner) using a coronagraph, which allows for the fainter planets to be detected. The bright and dark rings we see on the star’s image are optical artefacts. The two planets are visible as two bright dots in the centre and bottom right of the frame.

Credit:
ESO/Bohn et al.

www.eso.org

First ever image of a multi-planet system around a Sun-like star

First ever image of a multi-planet system around a Sun-like star
www.eso.org www.eso.org


I think the secret is in picking a "close" small star with huge gaseous planets.
 
Gordon_R said:
The Earth is much too hot to image in infrared, and would saturate the detectors, and cause thermal overloading of the telescope. In any case there are already dozens of weather satellites doing this every day 24/7.
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Unfortunately as you'll know also always in the direction of the sun from the L2 orbit which makes it a never-possible, but would've been interesting to see how much detail was possible.
 
Brian_G said:
Going to be honest here - although the science was great, the presentation was too shortsighted imo. I think they disappointed quite a few of the more general public.

Death of a star is too familiar already (near infrared version) thanks to the famous similar-looking pic.
The Exoplanet was supposed to include an actual pic, never happened. Just a few pixels maybe and so got dumped?

And I'm sure we can't expect production quality video broadcasts from peeps not dedicated to that, but what a mess (see for yourself, link in post 63 above). Loss of sound or too poor to hear, late switchovers, lost linkups, soundtrack way out, wrong slide presentations...

Anyway, Webb will still deliver.
Click to expand...
This is a pet peeve of mine. I think the current obsession with livestreams, just because we can and it's popular, is detrimental to quality. Doing this pre-recorded, rehearsed and polished would be far better. Nothing is gained by making it live.

The same thing applies to online conferences I've attended. Allowing presenters to pre-record makes for confident, clear and enjoyable presentations. Making people present live just leads to mistakes, connection issues and things outside of their control affecting the presentation.
 
panic mechanic said:
I kind of expected more. The comparison photos look like 320p vs 4k and it took them 30 years to achieve that. I hope they are in the process of building a successor to JWTS.
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They're arguably not the best first examples. What many don't get is that it's not an improvement in general available resolution, except that it's the biggest mirror in clearer space, it's about the very improved use of infrared and all the great things that has to offer.
 
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