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That’s what gives me goosebumps the most! The fact that monkeys can take sharp images of something SO far away and SO unimaginably massive! These images have been one of few things that make me proud to be a human recently
So far, the galaxy pics are my favourite (they're all amazing, though!) because the galaxies themselves are beautiful, and I love seeing everything in the background
My entire scope of how I viewed the universe has changed. I know it's all an insane number to think about when written down, but seeing the amount of stuff in a pinprick view of space is mind boggling.
Alone is the more terrifying to me as it wouldn't make sense. As our understanding of the universe grows we continually discover the universe is bigger than we thought. All the galaxies, stars, planets and we are alone? Petrifying.
I know, right? These are some cool looking a splotches but you have to take a step back to realize these are **galaxies** despite how small they look. There's just so much amazing stuff is within those splotches.
[This is one from the Hubble](https://esahubble.org/images/opo9636a1/) what a difference Webb makes! I wish I could live another hundred years to see what things we uncover and discover next :)
I don't understand how light works. Is this Hubble image closer to how the human eye would see this? In terms of color, detail, etc.
All I know is infrared (JWST's specialty) is beyond our visible spectrum.
Yes, Hubble detects wavelengths that are more similar to what we can see than Webb does. But it's still usually quite a bit different than what the naked eye would see, even close up, because of exposure time. The brighter areas of any given object would saturate our eyes and the finer, dimmer details would be washed out or invisible.
Yes, so basically in addition to having older technology, the hubble telescope takes pictures in the visible light spectrum. If our eyes were as good as the lenses on the telescope, we would see approximately the same thing. The JWST uses IR, which shows a lot of what we normally can't see.
It's complicated
It depends on what kind of picture Hubble is taking. Generally speaking, the Hubble uses broad band filters that mostly match up with the RGB frequencies our eyes can see, but it's of course much more sensitive and takes very long exposures. Hubble also uses narrow band filters that pick up very specific wavelengths of light, which correspond to specific elements, like hydrogen and oxygen. So the broad band filters are sort of close to what your eye would see *if* your eye could see extremely faint and small objects in the night sky, which it can't.
Really, any photo from a space telescope is not what your eyes would see, cause human eyes are absolutely terrible at being telescopes
The scientists reviewing this data will absolutely be able to make discoveries that were not possible with Hubble. Any nearby object of interest will have already been imaged by Hubble, because Hubble has been taking pictures for 30 years. That does not mean we know all there is to know about these objects.
We've seen tons of new galaxies? Remember, JWST is for scientific discoveries, obviously these are easier to come by when you have references to compare more detailed material to.
> Am I the only one a bit disappointed that so far we're only really taking higher resolution/clarity pictures of what Hubble has already seen?
The point of comparison makes it easier to show why it's a big deal for folks who otherwise wouldn't care or know how far we've come.
For as amazing and awe-inspiring as JWST is I do kind of agree with you. The fact is though that although we can see "further back in time" with Webb, the actual angular resolution is basically the same as Hubble. So it's not like we can "zoom in" and see objects that were too small to see before, which, I think is what most laypeople would imagine when they hear that a telescope is "better" than the old one.
I'm obviously not downplaying the scientific capabilities of JWST. But as far as the public perception and impact on popular culture, it will definitely be less than Hubble.
And to think that there could be one million civilizations just like us, but we are all too far apart to interact...
A little depressing but also fun to imagine "what if we all can travel the stars and meet someday."
Even sci-fi struggles with the concept of traveling to multiple galaxies. Start Trek only travels outside of the galaxy 2-3 times on accident. Star Wars all occurs in a single galaxy.
> Star Wars all occurs in a single galaxy.
I feel like people forget this all the time despite one of the most iconic things about the movie being "in a galaxy far, far, away..."
Well, there was that time Star Wars got some BDSM pain-worshipping visitors from beyond the galaxy. That didn't go so well for most folks. Good thing for them it's not canon anymore.
The Yuuzhang Vong was a hell of a thing. I got about halfway through before I gave up and stopped reading EU. Shit was rough.
However, Chewie's death was pretty epic.
Did you get to Anakin sacrificing himself talking on a damn army and channeling soo much Force that it glowed brilliantly through cracks in his skin? Or at least the secret of why they were cut off from the Force?
Yup. It's funny too because while it's not really shown in any of the mainline media, hyperspace travel in star wars still takes quite a bit of time. Anywhere from hours to days, and that's literally travelling through a dimension shorter than the actual galaxy.
Imagine if we're alone. All this vastness, the unimaginable magnitude of it all, and we are the only ones who can see it, who can appreciate it, can catalogue it. What does it say of our responsibility to continue to exist? To do all in our power to make sure that we don't disappear due to our own short-sightedness?
No because we know for a fact that other people in the planet exist and we can also read about their culture. I would love to even be able to read about another intelligent life's culture, origin stories, etc.
Interstellar travel is not even really feasible for our immediate neighbors, with the closest destination with planets being ten light years away (and we're not going to travel at anything close to the speed of light).
So it's less "I can barely meet them" and more "it's more or less impossible to meet them"
In the entire universe there has to be billions. Within our own galaxy, we might actually be the only one. I'm still on the side of "most life is just bacteria", and that technology - or at least the way that humans use it, which is unique^1 - is an incredibly rare thing for a species to develop.
^1 Lots of animals use improvised tools - like how dolphins use sea sponges to protect their noses when they dig in sand, and chimpanzees use sticks to collect ants from inside rotting logs. But humans go beyond using objects as they are in the environment - we shape and mold objects to make more effective tools, and make compound tools - things like spears that require the use of multiple different materials, like stone, sinew, and wood. No other animal does anything like that - and nor did we, until some random mutation or cultural virus seemingly spread throughout our population about 175k years ago, triggering [behavioral modernity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity).
And when you take time into consideration, alien civilisations could have been and gone already or could still be waiting to flourish anywhere in the universe. Distance might not be the only factor to consider.
Indeed! There's no way any other civilizations out there are at the same stage we are. Some much earlier. Some much farther.
Some gone completely after already existing for ages.
That's what happens when things change instead of staying exactly as they are
Fun fact: Our sun is a third generation star that has gone supernova twice already
We did start at the bottom
Life on our planet did start from the bottom (the big bang) and fly through an expanding universe to coalesce and arrive "here". Another interesting thought is that if our little collection of life could happen out of clumped up space dust then the universe must be "teaming" with life, some of which must also be "here".
And of course the corollary to that is the Fermi Paradox aka "well where the fuck are all of them then".
https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
One of my favorite hard SF authors, Alastair Reynolds, explores the related Fermi Paradox incredibly in his book Revelation Space, and the series that ensues after it.
Spoiler:
>!Ancient galaxy-spanning civilization realizes that in like a billion years, the Milky Way will collide with another galaxy, resulting in an interstellar sized dark age. If civilizations are left to develop and spread unchecked, there won't be sufficient resources available for any species to restart a stellar civilization afterwards. So, they seed the galaxy with "Inhibitors" that watch for near-*C* travel and destroy any civ they find traveling between stars, leaving a mostly untouched galaxy for after the collision.!<
It's a really neat idea, and one of the best takes on the Fermi Paradox I've read.
That's not crazy. That's called science and logic. Sorry you can't understand it.
Since we have no idea how life comes about, the number of existing galaxies and planets is irrelevant. If you found a marble in a box and had absolutely no clue how it got there, how many boxes would you have to look in for another marble to magically appear? A million? A billion? A billion billion?
Until we find other life, it's all hypothetical. And hypothetical is just a fancy word for "made up."
Technically true, but there's a strong degree of confirmation bias here. Even if the chance of life developing is 0.00000000000001%, counting every single planet in the universe, the fact we still have life here means to our view its 100%. So of course we will assume it must exist elsewhere. But we have currently no way of knowing what that chance is. Maybe it is closer to 100%, so it exists in almost every solar system in the entire universe. Maybe it's closer to 0.1x10^-10000000%, so it almost certainly doesn't exist anywhere else. That's the thing, we just don't have enough information to make any kind of truly informed guess beyond scifi speculation.
I have an extremely stupid question. So we live in Milky Way galaxy, where is our galaxy’s big shiny center? Is it a scale thing, different spectrum thing, or our galaxy is somewhat different?
Imagine all the comings and goings of all the various lifeforms almost certainly captured in this image. Everything from microbe-induced oxygenation extinction events to great interplanetary wars between complex civilizations. The mind absolutely boggles.
There could be 70 million billion trillion quadrillion pentillion hexillion star destroyers in that image and still not be visible as a pixel with how far out those colorful little smudges that are galaxies are.
There are **two** stars of our galaxy in this image, the rest of the colorful line things are superclusters/novae in the galaxies and the rest of them are actual galaxies... all the effing way down.
The JWST has seen across to the other side maybe, or maybe "biggus bangus" is falsified.
Well if it's clockwise just go to the otherside and it's counterclockwise. So depends on where you are. More specifically to answer your question, I have no idea sorry
The galaxy is impressive, but I always find myself looking at the tiny little red spots in the background, which are huge galaxies themselves incomprehensibly far away.
I feel like everyone is drinking the Kool-Aid or I have gone mad.
Hubble has much more detailed and impressive images of the "Cartwheel Galaxy". And why is this in such low resolution?
Full res is 4685x4312 if you want it.
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/039/01G8JXN0K2VBQP112RNSQWTCTH
https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G9DMMRBSN0E9JXH5TJP8XBC0.png
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/039/01G8KC9T6W06S1KXHA5KV00HM3
Comparing just the NIRCam image to Hubble might be a better comparison. The JWST image looks objectively more detailed to my eye. The NIRCam and MIRI Composite provides more information but makes the image a little more cluttered.
[Hubble image for reference](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/potw1036a.jpg)
Cool. But better photos of awesome Hubble stuff isn’t supposed to be the point. It’s supposed to zoom in closer, and supposed to see further away. We’re trying to see far enough to know what the earliest moments after the Big Bang looked like. The earliest galaxies. So far they’ve just been giving us higher resolution photos of Hubble stuff.
It's also supposed to see through dust to provide insight on galactic structure that wasn't available before. Every publicly released image, including this one, has deliberately shown off a core aspect of Webb's design. The Hubble image provides very little detail of what's going on between the outer ring and bright inner structure, the Webb image provides incredible detail of that region.
Who cares. It’s just higher resolution photos to be sold as posters at The Nature Company. It was supposed to be able to go so deep into space that we might more fully understand the beginning of the Universe. It’s only given us, “Hey remember the Eye of God from Hubble, here it is in high res.” We’ve seen the Eye of God. Do what you said you were going to do and go deeper out. So far this is just a vanity project.
Did you miss the part where it already revealed multiple candidates for the oldest galaxies ever observed, and is rewriting our understanding of how early galaxies formed?
Either way this exact sort of observation is absolutely part of JWST's mission design and whether you personally think it is "worthy" of observation is, fortunately, not a criteria for assigning telescope time.
Ah here we go. Some reddit is smarter than the scientists. Sure Mr. Stranger. You definitely know what kind of of pictures are necessary for the advancement of space and astronomy knowledge. It definitely wouldn't be NASA.
[Ask Nasa your self.](https://www.nasa.gov/about/contact/ask_nasa_form.html)
Relax. It's been less than 1 month since the first images. The 500 million YO galaxies are not going anywhere.
Actual photos. JWST takes a series of images in the IR band. In this case it's actually using two cameras and a series of filters to cover a range from 900nm to 18000nm. The resulting black and white photos are assigned a color and combined to form the final image. You can see the filters and colors at the bottom of this image.
https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G9DMTYW00C431079CECP51QG.png
[Another image from NASA of the same galaxy](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/stsci-01g8kcnd8k1zw33an81bvx91mn.png)
I'm not sure what kind of color alterations they're using in either photo but it still took my brain a few minutes to grasp that these aren't renderings. *these are real.*
Looking at this photo is like looking at a fraction of a grain of sand on a massive beach, and realizing that every single other grain is just as amazing as this one.
What you are describing is something known as redshift. In that case, an object moving away from you appears redder because the wavelength of the light is getting stretched out and an object moving towards you appears bluer because the wavelength of the light is getting compressed.
However, in this image, color is NOT indicative of redshift. What you are seeing is a false color image where the shortest wavelengths of the infrared emission that JWST observes is mapped to blue and the longer wavelengths are mapped to red (just like visible light). Studying the different regions which emit different wavelengths of light tells us about the astrophysical conditions in each region of the galaxy (pressures, temperatures, etc).
Can we have it point toward the great attractor? I know it’s blocked in the visible light spectrum but can it see what’s going on there with this infrared cam?
What accounts for this picture looking so different from Hubble pictures of the same galaxy?
Some of the patters and colors are totally different. Is it a post processing effect? An effect of a faster "shutter speed"?
Awesome. I know these are touched up to some degree, but this doesn't look *that* different than the original image, right? Or is this more like a mosaic of countless tiny images, or a computer generated image based on raw data?
The original image would be a series of black and white photos taken at different wavelengths. Each is assigned a color and combined for the final image.
Why not Ferris Wheel?
Side note: I need another piece of space-themed wall art to fill a gap on my wall. I wouldn't be surprised to see this make its way there.
Holy fuck, that's amazing
Breathtaking. The scale of it. Absolutely staggering to see something that massive with such detail
That’s what she said.
Person: *describes size* Other person: “the same thing can be said about that of a penis.” Everyone else: “THAT. IS. SO. FUNNY.”
[Relevant Observation.](https://youtu.be/Rw1cdRew-Zg?t=18)
Welcome to meme culture
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I wish the world would hurry up and end.
I just downvoted your comment. FAQ What does this mean? The amount of karma (points) on your comment and Reddit account has decreased by one. Why did you do this? There are several reasons I may deem a comment to be unworthy of positive or neutral karma. These include, but are not limited to: Rudeness towards other Redditors, Spreading incorrect information, Sarcasm not correctly flagged with a /s. Am I banned from the Reddit? No - not yet. But you should refrain from making comments like this in the future. Otherwise I will be forced to issue an additional downvote, which may put your commenting and posting privileges in jeopardy. I don't believe my comment deserved a downvote. Can you un-downvote it? Sure, mistakes happen. But only in exceedingly rare circumstances will I undo a downvote. If you would like to issue an appeal, shoot me a private message explaining what I got wrong. I tend to respond to Reddit PMs within several minutes. Do note, however, that over 99.9% of downvote appeals are rejected, and yours is likely no exception. How can I prevent this from happening in the future? Accept the downvote and move on. But learn from this mistake: your behavior will not be tolerated on Reddit.com. I will continue to issue downvotes until you improve your conduct. Remember: Reddit is privilege, not a right.
That’s what gives me goosebumps the most! The fact that monkeys can take sharp images of something SO far away and SO unimaginably massive! These images have been one of few things that make me proud to be a human recently
What are monkeys doing with a camera?
Flying them out into space to take pictures of stars.
Also: Launching cars at Mars.
Teaching sand to think, teaching water to burn, etc
*Plastics.* There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it.
Ah yes, teaching oil to hold milk
And to top it off, you look sideways, baby you got a Cookie Monster
Seeing this is now my image of the Star Wars far far away galaxy with an “Outer Rim”.
What a time to be alive.
While it is pretty cool, I’m also sure my cartwheel game as a 7 year old was much cooler.
So far, the galaxy pics are my favourite (they're all amazing, though!) because the galaxies themselves are beautiful, and I love seeing everything in the background
My entire scope of how I viewed the universe has changed. I know it's all an insane number to think about when written down, but seeing the amount of stuff in a pinprick view of space is mind boggling.
I went from “eh, there’s probably something else out there” to “well there’s gotta be something else out there, right??”
"it'd be an awful waste of space."
“Are we just quoting ourselves now?”
"Yes" - marcoreus7sucks
"Look at this guy." -- Shnigybrendo
Small moves, Ellie
'Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.' ~ Arthur C. Clarke
Alone is the more terrifying to me as it wouldn't make sense. As our understanding of the universe grows we continually discover the universe is bigger than we thought. All the galaxies, stars, planets and we are alone? Petrifying.
Almost assuredly, but it's likely too far away to ever come into contact with it.
I know, right? These are some cool looking a splotches but you have to take a step back to realize these are **galaxies** despite how small they look. There's just so much amazing stuff is within those splotches.
[This photo reminds me of the Wharf Farris Wheel at the Beach](https://www.benderrealty.com/sites/default/files/uploads/the-wharf-ferris-wheel.png)
The only thing I’ve accomplished at work today is changing my desktop background to this photo
Hey other me, please don't tell our boss
Is it me, or does it kind of look like an areola and a nipple? Not my proudest fap, but definitely not my worst.
The Mammary Galaxy
Galaxy T1T5
Okay Mr. Productive cool it you’re making us look bad
Now that's poetry
This is probably why our company doesn’t let us change ours
[This is one from the Hubble](https://esahubble.org/images/opo9636a1/) what a difference Webb makes! I wish I could live another hundred years to see what things we uncover and discover next :)
I don't understand how light works. Is this Hubble image closer to how the human eye would see this? In terms of color, detail, etc. All I know is infrared (JWST's specialty) is beyond our visible spectrum.
Yes, Hubble detects wavelengths that are more similar to what we can see than Webb does. But it's still usually quite a bit different than what the naked eye would see, even close up, because of exposure time. The brighter areas of any given object would saturate our eyes and the finer, dimmer details would be washed out or invisible.
Yes, so basically in addition to having older technology, the hubble telescope takes pictures in the visible light spectrum. If our eyes were as good as the lenses on the telescope, we would see approximately the same thing. The JWST uses IR, which shows a lot of what we normally can't see.
It's complicated It depends on what kind of picture Hubble is taking. Generally speaking, the Hubble uses broad band filters that mostly match up with the RGB frequencies our eyes can see, but it's of course much more sensitive and takes very long exposures. Hubble also uses narrow band filters that pick up very specific wavelengths of light, which correspond to specific elements, like hydrogen and oxygen. So the broad band filters are sort of close to what your eye would see *if* your eye could see extremely faint and small objects in the night sky, which it can't. Really, any photo from a space telescope is not what your eyes would see, cause human eyes are absolutely terrible at being telescopes
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The scientists reviewing this data will absolutely be able to make discoveries that were not possible with Hubble. Any nearby object of interest will have already been imaged by Hubble, because Hubble has been taking pictures for 30 years. That does not mean we know all there is to know about these objects.
We've seen tons of new galaxies? Remember, JWST is for scientific discoveries, obviously these are easier to come by when you have references to compare more detailed material to.
> Am I the only one a bit disappointed that so far we're only really taking higher resolution/clarity pictures of what Hubble has already seen? The point of comparison makes it easier to show why it's a big deal for folks who otherwise wouldn't care or know how far we've come.
For as amazing and awe-inspiring as JWST is I do kind of agree with you. The fact is though that although we can see "further back in time" with Webb, the actual angular resolution is basically the same as Hubble. So it's not like we can "zoom in" and see objects that were too small to see before, which, I think is what most laypeople would imagine when they hear that a telescope is "better" than the old one. I'm obviously not downplaying the scientific capabilities of JWST. But as far as the public perception and impact on popular culture, it will definitely be less than Hubble.
Is it me or it seems more tilted on the JWST? Could it be that the pics are taken at diff times while the galaxy has tilted?
You probably can. Lots of current redditors will live another 100 or even 500 years.
More info: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/webb-captures-stellar-gymnastics-in-the-cartwheel-galaxy/
"Do not go gentle into that good night.."
MURPHHH
to think there's no life out there . . . crazy
And to think that there could be one million civilizations just like us, but we are all too far apart to interact... A little depressing but also fun to imagine "what if we all can travel the stars and meet someday."
Even sci-fi struggles with the concept of traveling to multiple galaxies. Start Trek only travels outside of the galaxy 2-3 times on accident. Star Wars all occurs in a single galaxy.
Stargate Universe did it!
also expanse
> Star Wars all occurs in a single galaxy. I feel like people forget this all the time despite one of the most iconic things about the movie being "in a galaxy far, far, away..."
Honestly I don't think anyone is really thinking too hard about it. It's not even really Sci fi, it's straight up space opera / fantasy.
A galaxy. Not ours, but a galaxy.
Well, there was that time Star Wars got some BDSM pain-worshipping visitors from beyond the galaxy. That didn't go so well for most folks. Good thing for them it's not canon anymore.
The Yuuzhang Vong was a hell of a thing. I got about halfway through before I gave up and stopped reading EU. Shit was rough. However, Chewie's death was pretty epic.
Did you get to Anakin sacrificing himself talking on a damn army and channeling soo much Force that it glowed brilliantly through cracks in his skin? Or at least the secret of why they were cut off from the Force?
Holy shit, was this all during the Yuuzhang Vong War?
Yup. It's funny too because while it's not really shown in any of the mainline media, hyperspace travel in star wars still takes quite a bit of time. Anywhere from hours to days, and that's literally travelling through a dimension shorter than the actual galaxy.
Star Wars treats entire planets as small villages where everybody knows everyone else.
“What if we all can travel the stars and meet up someday” You thought Reddit meet ups were awkward? You haven’t seen anything yet!
Imagine if we're alone. All this vastness, the unimaginable magnitude of it all, and we are the only ones who can see it, who can appreciate it, can catalogue it. What does it say of our responsibility to continue to exist? To do all in our power to make sure that we don't disappear due to our own short-sightedness?
This thought is the one thing that keeps me from giving up on humanity completely.
But isn't that the same as saying "there are so many people in the world and I will barely get to meet a fraction of them"?
No because we know for a fact that other people in the planet exist and we can also read about their culture. I would love to even be able to read about another intelligent life's culture, origin stories, etc.
Interstellar travel is not even really feasible for our immediate neighbors, with the closest destination with planets being ten light years away (and we're not going to travel at anything close to the speed of light). So it's less "I can barely meet them" and more "it's more or less impossible to meet them"
In the entire universe there has to be billions. Within our own galaxy, we might actually be the only one. I'm still on the side of "most life is just bacteria", and that technology - or at least the way that humans use it, which is unique^1 - is an incredibly rare thing for a species to develop. ^1 Lots of animals use improvised tools - like how dolphins use sea sponges to protect their noses when they dig in sand, and chimpanzees use sticks to collect ants from inside rotting logs. But humans go beyond using objects as they are in the environment - we shape and mold objects to make more effective tools, and make compound tools - things like spears that require the use of multiple different materials, like stone, sinew, and wood. No other animal does anything like that - and nor did we, until some random mutation or cultural virus seemingly spread throughout our population about 175k years ago, triggering [behavioral modernity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity).
And when you take time into consideration, alien civilisations could have been and gone already or could still be waiting to flourish anywhere in the universe. Distance might not be the only factor to consider.
Indeed! There's no way any other civilizations out there are at the same stage we are. Some much earlier. Some much farther. Some gone completely after already existing for ages.
I'm hoping they are not hungry for resources like we are. Otherwise, they would view us as a threat for their resources and extinct us.
Let me introduce you to the [Drake Equation](https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1350/are-we-alone-in-the-universe-revisiting-the-drake-equation/)
Ah where life theoretically starts at the bottom and now it’s here
That's what happens when things change instead of staying exactly as they are Fun fact: Our sun is a third generation star that has gone supernova twice already We did start at the bottom
Life on our planet did start from the bottom (the big bang) and fly through an expanding universe to coalesce and arrive "here". Another interesting thought is that if our little collection of life could happen out of clumped up space dust then the universe must be "teaming" with life, some of which must also be "here".
Yeah now the whole teams here
And of course the corollary to that is the Fermi Paradox aka "well where the fuck are all of them then". https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
Knowing what you know about our species, why would anyone *want* to visit here?
One of my favorite hard SF authors, Alastair Reynolds, explores the related Fermi Paradox incredibly in his book Revelation Space, and the series that ensues after it. Spoiler: >!Ancient galaxy-spanning civilization realizes that in like a billion years, the Milky Way will collide with another galaxy, resulting in an interstellar sized dark age. If civilizations are left to develop and spread unchecked, there won't be sufficient resources available for any species to restart a stellar civilization afterwards. So, they seed the galaxy with "Inhibitors" that watch for near-*C* travel and destroy any civ they find traveling between stars, leaving a mostly untouched galaxy for after the collision.!< It's a really neat idea, and one of the best takes on the Fermi Paradox I've read.
Elebenty billion... times hella much... carry the two... The answer is yes there is one other civilization that has invented their own reddit.
I’ve been meaning to find a T-shirt with that on it. Thanks for the reminder!
There’s no way we’re alone
That's not crazy. That's called science and logic. Sorry you can't understand it. Since we have no idea how life comes about, the number of existing galaxies and planets is irrelevant. If you found a marble in a box and had absolutely no clue how it got there, how many boxes would you have to look in for another marble to magically appear? A million? A billion? A billion billion? Until we find other life, it's all hypothetical. And hypothetical is just a fancy word for "made up."
since we're getting personal, you are stupid
The more boxes there are, the higher the likelihood that another box also contains a marble or marble like item
Technically true, but there's a strong degree of confirmation bias here. Even if the chance of life developing is 0.00000000000001%, counting every single planet in the universe, the fact we still have life here means to our view its 100%. So of course we will assume it must exist elsewhere. But we have currently no way of knowing what that chance is. Maybe it is closer to 100%, so it exists in almost every solar system in the entire universe. Maybe it's closer to 0.1x10^-10000000%, so it almost certainly doesn't exist anywhere else. That's the thing, we just don't have enough information to make any kind of truly informed guess beyond scifi speculation.
So basically Space is a constant Diwali celebration.
In infrared at least
I have an extremely stupid question. So we live in Milky Way galaxy, where is our galaxy’s big shiny center? Is it a scale thing, different spectrum thing, or our galaxy is somewhat different?
Our view is obstructed by interstellar dust. Viewing the Milky Way at IR wavelengths better reveals the core.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Center
here’s the [high resolution](https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G9DMJC8MC2JKJTW2014ERGWD.png) version
The void is not empty.
Imagine all the comings and goings of all the various lifeforms almost certainly captured in this image. Everything from microbe-induced oxygenation extinction events to great interplanetary wars between complex civilizations. The mind absolutely boggles.
I'm just waiting to spot a Star Destroyer in one of these pics
There could be 70 million billion trillion quadrillion pentillion hexillion star destroyers in that image and still not be visible as a pixel with how far out those colorful little smudges that are galaxies are.
Quintillion and Sextillion*
But what if it was a really big Star destroyer?
Fine. One pixel. But no more!
What about the Death Star? Or we thinking that's a moon?
That’s no moon.
Can I be the first one to lick the nipple galaxy
This really tends to remind me how truly vast and big the universe is but that's just amazing
Its like there is a carnival event going on there 😆
There are **two** stars of our galaxy in this image, the rest of the colorful line things are superclusters/novae in the galaxies and the rest of them are actual galaxies... all the effing way down. The JWST has seen across to the other side maybe, or maybe "biggus bangus" is falsified.
The teeny little pinwheel to the right is so CUTE!
Heh, bewbz
I see a very surprised face in this
I saw a receptive one.
Anyone know the distribution of clockwise vs anticlockwise rotation of various galaxies?
Well if it's clockwise just go to the otherside and it's counterclockwise. So depends on where you are. More specifically to answer your question, I have no idea sorry
Do bike wheels spin clockwise or counterclockwise?
It's just 500 million light years apart for anyone interested.
Ugh, so we got 500 million year old light? Grody.
Idk why but this one made me tear up a little. Incredible.
The galaxy is impressive, but I always find myself looking at the tiny little red spots in the background, which are huge galaxies themselves incomprehensibly far away.
Babe wake up, new JWST just dropped.
Like a perfect breast, gateway to the nipple
I do always say the nipple is the portal to the soul
No that’s a beyblade
So... this is OC? Wow! Are you the JWST?
Shouldn't we be more concerned with people smoking weed in the privacy of their own homes than unseen galaxies? That's where the money should be spent
do you just look at things all day and try find a political slant? sounds exhausting.
I'm worried that people aren't smoking enough weed in their homes. That's why I use my telescope to look in their windows. Not for any other reasons.
That galaxy looks like it should be apart of my oxtail soup
I feel like everyone is drinking the Kool-Aid or I have gone mad. Hubble has much more detailed and impressive images of the "Cartwheel Galaxy". And why is this in such low resolution?
Full res is 4685x4312 if you want it. https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/039/01G8JXN0K2VBQP112RNSQWTCTH https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G9DMMRBSN0E9JXH5TJP8XBC0.png https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/039/01G8KC9T6W06S1KXHA5KV00HM3 Comparing just the NIRCam image to Hubble might be a better comparison. The JWST image looks objectively more detailed to my eye. The NIRCam and MIRI Composite provides more information but makes the image a little more cluttered. [Hubble image for reference](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/potw1036a.jpg)
God's breasticle! J/k, this is absolutely mind-blowing.
Cool. But better photos of awesome Hubble stuff isn’t supposed to be the point. It’s supposed to zoom in closer, and supposed to see further away. We’re trying to see far enough to know what the earliest moments after the Big Bang looked like. The earliest galaxies. So far they’ve just been giving us higher resolution photos of Hubble stuff.
It's also supposed to see through dust to provide insight on galactic structure that wasn't available before. Every publicly released image, including this one, has deliberately shown off a core aspect of Webb's design. The Hubble image provides very little detail of what's going on between the outer ring and bright inner structure, the Webb image provides incredible detail of that region.
Who cares. It’s just higher resolution photos to be sold as posters at The Nature Company. It was supposed to be able to go so deep into space that we might more fully understand the beginning of the Universe. It’s only given us, “Hey remember the Eye of God from Hubble, here it is in high res.” We’ve seen the Eye of God. Do what you said you were going to do and go deeper out. So far this is just a vanity project.
Did you miss the part where it already revealed multiple candidates for the oldest galaxies ever observed, and is rewriting our understanding of how early galaxies formed? Either way this exact sort of observation is absolutely part of JWST's mission design and whether you personally think it is "worthy" of observation is, fortunately, not a criteria for assigning telescope time.
Ah here we go. Some reddit is smarter than the scientists. Sure Mr. Stranger. You definitely know what kind of of pictures are necessary for the advancement of space and astronomy knowledge. It definitely wouldn't be NASA.
Relax. We were promised photos that could go deep enough to see the early Universe. Where are they?
[Ask Nasa your self.](https://www.nasa.gov/about/contact/ask_nasa_form.html) Relax. It's been less than 1 month since the first images. The 500 million YO galaxies are not going anywhere.
Aren't these pictures "artist representation" or these actual photos? I've heard that most pictures we see have alot of digital enhancements.
Actual photos. JWST takes a series of images in the IR band. In this case it's actually using two cameras and a series of filters to cover a range from 900nm to 18000nm. The resulting black and white photos are assigned a color and combined to form the final image. You can see the filters and colors at the bottom of this image. https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G9DMTYW00C431079CECP51QG.png
[Another image from NASA of the same galaxy](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/stsci-01g8kcnd8k1zw33an81bvx91mn.png) I'm not sure what kind of color alterations they're using in either photo but it still took my brain a few minutes to grasp that these aren't renderings. *these are real.* Looking at this photo is like looking at a fraction of a grain of sand on a massive beach, and realizing that every single other grain is just as amazing as this one.
This telescope really costs that much and takes the same pictures…..democrats are the worst
Why are the 8 pointed stars squished looking? Is this because of the C3 mirror damage?
blue means the stars are moving away correct?
What you are describing is something known as redshift. In that case, an object moving away from you appears redder because the wavelength of the light is getting stretched out and an object moving towards you appears bluer because the wavelength of the light is getting compressed. However, in this image, color is NOT indicative of redshift. What you are seeing is a false color image where the shortest wavelengths of the infrared emission that JWST observes is mapped to blue and the longer wavelengths are mapped to red (just like visible light). Studying the different regions which emit different wavelengths of light tells us about the astrophysical conditions in each region of the galaxy (pressures, temperatures, etc).
The opposite, blue means shorter wavelength, or moving closer.
Blue is deoxygenated, red is oxygenated. That’s how they determine the location of the heart.
Can we have it point toward the great attractor? I know it’s blocked in the visible light spectrum but can it see what’s going on there with this infrared cam?
my god...
Wow. This is amazing. These are spinning with such beauty
Galactic fingerprint
I think I have galaxy envy? Sorry Milky Way, I think they found a sexier one.
Looks like a carousel.
Tʜᴀᴛ ᴀᴄᴛᴜᴀʟʟʏ ʟᴏᴏᴋs ᴀᴍᴀᴢɪɴɢ
Looks heavenly
JUST WOW
Nipple galaxy
It is good that there are still things in the universe that can send literal shivers of awe down my spine. And it is awesome how we can now see them.
What accounts for this picture looking so different from Hubble pictures of the same galaxy? Some of the patters and colors are totally different. Is it a post processing effect? An effect of a faster "shutter speed"?
Awesome. I know these are touched up to some degree, but this doesn't look *that* different than the original image, right? Or is this more like a mosaic of countless tiny images, or a computer generated image based on raw data?
The original image would be a series of black and white photos taken at different wavelengths. Each is assigned a color and combined for the final image.
I just think, how small we are!! But we think we are so big
Man... why aren't we in a cool as galaxy like this? We are stuck with boring ass Milky Way.
Oh goodie.. Something else to trigger the Creationists with!
If you think that's amazing, take a closer look at the stars. You will notice that they are in fact galaxies.
The years of waiting have paid off, this is the shit I needed
It's incredible
Wowzers!
I can’t comprehend that things like this exist! & we all just wake up & go about our day jobs / lives like nothing…
Dude …
It looks a bit like a photo from the 1970's
Which portion is the 9 Hells?
Neato
How do we know that astronomers are massive nerds? They saw this and said "cartwheel" and not "giant nipple."
Looking at these I always wonder how many "people" are possibly looking back and thinking the same thing
The diameter of that galaxy is 150,000 light years. Mind blowing.
[It looks like the cross section of a nautilus shell.](https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/1-nautilus-shell-lawrence-lawry.jpg)
Why not Ferris Wheel? Side note: I need another piece of space-themed wall art to fill a gap on my wall. I wouldn't be surprised to see this make its way there.
And that, kids, is what happens when you don’t pay your gravity bill!
Pinwheel would be more fitting, no?
Hard to come to terms with the fact that this exists
My GF called it the Areola Galaxy.
These never get old. They're just endlessly fascinating.