[HN Gopher] James Webb Space Telescope captures high-resolution ...
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James Webb Space Telescope captures high-resolution image of Uranus
Author : gmays
Score : 565 points
Date : 2023-12-19 13:37 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (webbtelescope.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (webbtelescope.org)
| frendiversity wrote:
| Underrated submission title
| gmays wrote:
| 9 year old me finally gets to cross this off the bucket list.
| Mashimo wrote:
| As someone who does not follow space stuff, I kinda expected more
| / higher resolution.
| boringg wrote:
| Some high def drone footage would have fit the bill for you?
| (FYI in case it wasn't recognized /S as your comment seems a
| bit silly to me in that you are dissapointed that we have a
| decent quality image of something ~4 LH away).
|
| The expectations humans have on new technology ceases to amaze
| me especially when something is unbelievably impressive and
| people are like, that's all?
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| Nope but Uranus is a mere 2.5h light hours away and the
| resolution appears to be roughly the same than looking at the
| moon with naked eyes. So it's not totally unreasonable to
| have expected a slightly better image for the best telescope
| we have.
|
| This being said, that image is still better than anything
| else we have seen from other telescopes
| trelane wrote:
| Uranus is roughly 3 light _hours_ away.
|
| Distance from earth to Uranus varies between 2.6-3.2e12 m
| from Earth [1]. Speed of light in vacuum is 3e8 m/s, so
| calling the distance 3e12 to make the math easy, it's 1e4s
| (2 and 7/9 hours) for light to travel between earth and
| Uranus.
|
| [1] https://www.space.com/18709-uranus-
| distance.html#:~:text=How....
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| yes, typo... thanks and fixed! The point was, it's not
| all that far away when compared to even the next star 4.3
| light years away (2.5h vs 4.5years)
| monadINtop wrote:
| that comparison should make you appreciate the
| unfathomable distances between even the most local
| astronomical objects, not underestimate it.
|
| The distance between continents is hard enough for the
| human brain to comprehend, and imagine the difficulty in
| trying to caputure an image with a telephoto lens of some
| resolvable feature in japan, from europe or america
| (forgetting the shape of the Earth's surface for a
| moment).
|
| Of course ever graceful, nature offers us a compromise.
| Most astronomical object (galaxies, nebula) are very big,
| and very very far away. It is not resolution that makes
| it difficult to see them (since they span an appreciable
| arc-width of our sky, e.g. search pictures of the angular
| width of andromeda galaxy or the orion nebula compared to
| the moon), but how faint they are.
|
| The photons they emit are travelling across swathes of
| the observable universe. They travel across scales where
| the presence of galaxy clusters warp the geometry of
| space-time, a turbulant voyage for these light rays. They
| travel across distances where space itself inflates like
| a balloon, the expanding universe sapping energy from
| them until they arrive in our detectors or eyeballs
| redshifted beyond recognision. This is why observatories
| and satellite-telescopes need to place a huge emphasis on
| scaling up mirror size to scoop up all the photons they
| possibly can, as opposed to strictly focusing on
| resolution - as an earthbound photographer might naively
| expect.
|
| Now consider the nature of planets, they are not diffuse
| clouds of molecules or dust lanes spanning galactic
| widths, they are tightly bound, tangible, physical
| objects. Now they might be our neighbours, trapped in the
| same spiral around the sun's gravitational well, but that
| doesn't mean they're "close" in any sense that the human
| mind could every really fathom. If we want to resolve
| atmospheric or geographic (is that even the right word
| for other planets?) features, we need to be able to
| achieve precise resolutions beyond what is normally
| required for other types of astronomical observation.
| Indeed, if you've every taken a class on optics or
| astronomy, you might be suprised how quickly fundamental
| limits of resolution that arise from lights wave-like
| behaviour - like airy disks - begin to veil that which we
| wish to observe, when playing around with frequiencies
| and aperture widths on a "humman" scale.
| peddling-brink wrote:
| This is Uranus from earth:
| https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/interactive-sky-watchi...
|
| Part of the trouble is that it's really far away.
| sp332 wrote:
| The photos on that page were taken with 8- and 14-inch
| telescopes. I expected a 6.5-meter one to have a more
| detailed image.
|
| Keck has a 10-meter aperture and its image of Uranus looks
| like this: https://keckobservatory.org/keck_pictures_of_uranu
| s_show_bes...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Webb is optimized for different things.
|
| https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/12/01/webb-space-telescope-
| ke...
|
| > Though the quality of the JWST and Keck images may look
| about the same to the untrained eye, de Pater noted that
| JWST has instruments that can measure aspects of Titan's
| atmosphere that Keck cannot, complementing one another. In
| particular, JWST's infrared spectroscopic capability allows
| it to pinpoint the altitudes of clouds and hazes with much
| better accuracy.
|
| > "By using spectrometers on JWST together with the optical
| image quality with Keck, we get a really complete picture
| of Titan," she said, such as the heights of clouds, the
| atmosphere's optical thickness, and the elevation of haze
| in the atmosphere.
|
| > In particular, at wavelengths where Earth's atmosphere is
| opaque -- that is, Titan cannot be seen from any Earth-
| based telescope -- JWST can observe and provide information
| on the lower atmosphere and surface.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| Bigger telescopes are mostly about capturing more photons
| to detect fainter objects. They don't really give you
| better resolution in most cases. Technically, a bigger
| telescope can give better resolution, but from the ground,
| the limit is usually atmospheric seeing. From orbit, it
| will be down to the quality of the optics, the resolution
| of the detector, and the precision of the tracking.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This is very much a basic misunderstanding with
| telescopes. Most people expect magnification. The amount
| of photons absorbed is something of a very esoteric
| concept to the uninitiated.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Signal to noise ratio.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| After ~150mm aperture, right?
|
| Highest magnification is approximately 2x the aperture in
| mm, and 300x is approximately the atmospheric limit.
| bhickey wrote:
| That's amazing! Through my 8in scope Uranus looks like a blue
| dot -- too big to be a star, but paltry even in comparison to
| Mars.
|
| Admittedly I've been having trouble reliably locating it.
| Currently it's near the middle of a line between the Pleiades
| and Jupiter. From where I am there are no naked eye visible
| stars in the region to help walk the scope in.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| yep, I tried a few days ago. It's in the "middle of
| nowhere". What star app do you use for hopping around?
| dylan604 wrote:
| At least you can even get that. Pluto is just a dot. And to
| properly image Pluto, you basically need to image the area
| Pluto is expected over several nights, and then stack the
| images to see which dot is moving.
| sneak wrote:
| I think we got supremely spoiled by Cassini.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| And Voyager 2. (not in NIR, though)
|
| A modern probe to the ice giants is long overdue. Plenty of
| missions were proposed over decades, but none actually made
| it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Comparing a mission to orbit and stay on mission is really
| unfair to one that is only whizzing by the planet. The ice
| bodies need their own versions of Cassini instead of just
| being a road side stop for souvenirs on the way to the
| actual destination. The plants are not the world's largest
| ball of twine or some other cash grab of an attraction.
| They should be _the_ destination.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| You'll have to play up the hydrocarbons to get the US to
| fund such a destination.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's a good thing the US is no longer the only space
| agency sending out probes into the solar system. Sadly,
| the reach of the US does extend into the other agencies
| in a pretty influential way though
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I'll be honest, it looks fake. I don't think it is fake and I'm
| not trying to imply that it is. The resolution is low and high
| at the same time. The other zoomed out pictures are better for
| me personally because it gives me a little more context seeing
| I know nothing about space.
| ykonstant wrote:
| This is so gorgeous. I didn't even know about the existence of
| rings on Uranus; it is so satisfying to be able to discern
| features like storms on such a far away planet!
| ohwellhere wrote:
| My 9 year old daughter told me last week that Uranus had rings,
| and I told her I really didn't think so, are you thinking of
| Saturn? And she said nope, they both do. What a weird bit of
| knowledge to get wrong, even at 9, so I looked it up. She was
| delighted to have taught me something.
| mykowebhn wrote:
| Neptune has rings as well, as does Jupiter.
| jinushaun wrote:
| That's crazy to hear. To me, after Saturn, Uranus is the most
| famous planet with rings because it's vertical instead of
| horizontal. That's the defining feature of Uranus.
| ykonstant wrote:
| For me it is precisely because I always had in mind the
| "featureless blue sphere" picture in mind, and never
| bothered to look deeper. Goes to show how important images
| are in the public sphere.
| dustincoates wrote:
| It's exactly why Uranus was my favorite planet growing up.
| It was such an outlier, which, if I dig farther into my
| psyche, probably aligned well with my self view as the only
| kid in my class who geeked out on space.
| euroderf wrote:
| Speaking of Psyche (and mythology), the names of Uranus's
| moons are excellent.
| User23 wrote:
| To me, after Saturn, Uranus is the most famous planet with
| rings because of toilet humor.
|
| As an aside, either get or borrow a decent telescope and
| see the rings of Saturn and the Galilean Moons for
| yourself. It's a really neat experience and gives you a
| direct personal shared experience with the birth of modern
| astronomy.
| davely wrote:
| Seeing Jupiter, its Great Red Spot, and a line of dots
| representing 4 of its largest moons, as well as Saturn
| and its rings through a telescope at a backyard astronomy
| event when I was a kid was such a ridiculously cool
| experience. Granted, I was a huge space dork.
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| The defining feature of Uranus is that its axis of rotation
| is at almost right angle to the axis of rotation of Solar
| system.
|
| The rings just conform to that axis of rotation along with
| moons and such.
|
| Also, rings are thought to be relatively recent feature of
| Uranus (on the order of hundreds of millions of years).
| rebolek wrote:
| IIRC, Saturn's rings are also relatively recent feature.
| If you think about it, what a time to be alive! Saturn
| and Uranus have rings and Sun and Moon are in so precious
| position, that we can experience total eclipse (this
| won't last too long also, relative to age of Solar
| system).
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Makes me curious what past/future aspects of our solar
| system we would have considered special had we been alive
| then.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| Liquid water oceans on Mars are believed to have existed
| in the past.
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| If it makes you feel better, outer planets with all their
| moons will be in habitable zone for a short time when our
| Sun will reach red giant stage in some billions of years.
| Vicinity9635 wrote:
| "the appalachian mountains are older than saturn's rings.
| the appalachian mountains are older than dinosaurs. the
| appalachian mountains are older than trees. the
| appalachian mountains are literally older than BONES. the
| appalachian mountains should be regarded with pure
| terror."
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Who came up with this? All I see a bunch of twitter users
| reposting it. Is it from something? Other than twitter I
| mean.
| mandevil wrote:
| I know at least at one point during the Cassini mission-
| though I confess I have not followed this in more than a
| decade it so I don't know if further study has refuted
| this idea- a popular theory for the rings was that
| basically Saturn was constantly forming and destroying
| moons into rings and back: a moon would get torn up and
| turned into a ring, then slowly clump back together over
| time and reform as a moon, then the cycle would continue.
| tnel77 wrote:
| Whenever my children teach me something, it makes us so
| happy. They, for teaching their dad. Me, for learning
| something from such a special little person. It's just the
| best.
| nate wrote:
| This is my favorite part of my day. Yesterday we were just
| having dinner talking about god knows what when my 9 year
| old drops something into convo about The Homestead Act and
| how many acres you could by and how they had to be
| developed and all these bullet points about it I haven't
| retained when I may have read about it so many years ago.
| It was delightful.
|
| Now, there was also the part about her thinking the
| Mexican-American War was in 1989. Which is Taylor Swift's
| birthday, her favorite artist. Which is hilarious on so
| many levels.
| dcminter wrote:
| My godson once solemnly asked his dad "Were dinosaurs
| before or after steam engines?" which is obviously
| adorable.
| triceratops wrote:
| > there was also the part about her thinking the Mexican-
| American War was in 1989. Which is Taylor Swift's
| birthday,
|
| So that's what _The Great War_ is about!
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I have learned that to most kids anything before 2000 is
| basically ancient history that all blends together.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Now, there was also the part about her thinking the
| Mexican-American War was in 1989
|
| there was a president that thought we had airplanes
| during the revolutionary war, so hopefully the date mix
| up wasn't judged too harshly
| z3phyr wrote:
| Neptune also has a ring.
|
| Jupiter also has ring, but it is not apparent.
| antognini wrote:
| They are very faint and difficult to detect. They weren't
| even observed directly when they were discovered. They were
| originally discovered when astronomers noticed that they
| occulted light of background stats.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| Occluded
| antognini wrote:
| In astronomy we use the term "occulted" when one body
| passes in front of another and blocks its light.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| TIL. Thank you
| wholinator2 wrote:
| That's so strange? 'Occluded' would be a suitable word
| for that meaning-wise though right? When did astronomy
| decide to use such a close sounding but different meaning
| word? Did occult mean what it does now when they started?
| Language is so strange
| 1-more wrote:
| The sciences are full of new-latin and neo-greek
| formations like Biology and Astronomy. So reaching back
| the the original meaning of occult "to hide (from)" isn't
| that big a stretch. Especially when "occlude" comes from
| a word meaning "to shut (away)" and an eclipse isn't
| shutting the sun away, just hiding it. The Mahdi isn't
| just standing behind something, he's hidden away in
| another plane. That's why he's the occluded imam.
|
| But also occlude has a chemistry meaning when one
| substance gets hidden inside another, so maybe it was too
| overloaded to be a good word for that.
| davidcuddeback wrote:
| I'm not sure about the history of these words, but
| astronomy also uses the noun form: "occultation" [1], for
| which there's not an obvious equivalent for "occlude."
|
| > _Did occult mean what it does now when they started?_
|
| A word can have more than one meaning. The first
| definition on merriam-webster.com covers the definition
| used in astronomy:
|
| occult (v.): to shut off from view or exposure: cover,
| eclipse [2]
|
| The adjective form might be a source of derivation for
| the meaning you're alluding to:
|
| occult (adj.): (1) not revealed: secret; (2) not easily
| apprehended or understood: abstruse, mysterious; (3)
| hidden from view: concealed [2]
|
| And finally, the paranormal meaning that people are more
| familiar with today:
|
| occult (n): matters regarded as involving the action or
| influence of supernatural or supernormal powers or some
| secret knowledge of them -> used with _the_ [2]
|
| Again, I don't know the history of these words. If I had
| to hazard a guess, I'd bet that the noun form, "the
| occult", is derived from the adjective form since "the
| occult" refers to supernatural phenomena, which is
| naturally hidden from view, concealed, not revealed,
| secret, not easily apprehended or understood, etc
| (because it's not real).
|
| Edit: Another guess. If you think about the history of
| astronomy, it was originally intertwined with religion
| and astrology. Perhaps these words date back to a time
| when "the occult" and astronomy weren't entirely
| separate. Anyways, I agree. Language is strange.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occultation
|
| [2]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/occult
| Pxtl wrote:
| Actually all 4 gas giants have rings, they're just much
| smaller and less visible than Saturn's. Jupiter and Neptune's
| rings are _very_ slight, compared to Uranus ' substantial
| ones and of course Saturn's gaudy decoration.
| manicennui wrote:
| I highly recommend checking out what we learned about
| Saturn's rings from Cassini. One example:
| https://science.nasa.gov/resource/the-tallest-peaks-2/
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Woah, that's amazing.
| matthoiland wrote:
| My daughter said there are 5 oceans ... I said she was wrong,
| then we looked at a modern map. Who forgot to send out the
| memo about the Southern Ocean?
| patwolf wrote:
| Same. That to me felt more shocking than losing Pluto as a
| planet.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| I don't know but if you find out could you put me on the
| mailing list? Or i guess i could have a child but one of
| those seems a lot easier.
|
| In all honesty, is there any place where i can view the
| curriculum that children in my area are being taught? They
| don't tell us about those changes but they might put it
| somewhere. I, for one, think the news should do something
| useful and teach us the updates from time to time. Could
| you imagine if all that politicking was instead useful
| scientific information?
| blindriver wrote:
| My kid, after watching some YouTube videos on prehistoric
| man, told me that the theory of the Missing Link was wrong.
|
| I was like, "Wait, what? When did that happen?" Apparently
| it was disproven for decades and I never knew. I felt like
| the old people who held onto their old beliefs that I felt
| such disdain for. He also went on to tell me that the
| brontosaurus didn't exist either and I had enough.
| 1-more wrote:
| Brontosaurus is controversial! A paper in 2015 asserts
| that it's distinct from Apatosaurus. When I was in school
| it was well understood to be just another name for the
| apatosaurus. Some teacher claimed it was an apatosaurus
| with the head and tail switched. But there's been some
| activity in this space!!
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brontosaurus
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| Next she'll tell you that Pluto isn't a planet and there are
| at least 5 other dinosaurs than T-Rex, diplodocus and
| raptor...
|
| In all seriousness, it's really quite interesting to see what
| has changed in 30 years.
| divbzero wrote:
| Yes, all four gas giants in our Solar System have rings:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_system#Ring_systems_of_pl.
| ..
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Are the rings only that prominent because of infrared? Would they
| look like that in visible light if you were close enough? Those
| look like they could compete with Saturn.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Nothing like this.
|
| Voyager saw this:
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/132160802@N06/40079347843
|
| Even that's better than we'd see with our eyes:
|
| > The rings here are significantly fainter relative to Uranus
| than pictured here; the charcoal black rings would be near the
| limits of naked eye visibility to a human observer.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I love webb, but there is something hauntingly beautiful
| about these photographs from voyager / juno and other flyby
| missions. It _feels_ close, yet alarmingly far.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| The flyby photos are cool but it's just so much more useful
| to have a telescope at a controlled location able to focus
| on any point for any amount of time. I do hope we keep
| doing flybys or autonomous exploration of the planets with
| a video feed
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Sure sure. Nobody is going to make mission decisions
| based on my artistic interpretation of the results.
|
| Aside: I think the most useful instrument for NASA's
| mission at the moment is a boolean "Life/no-life"
| indicator on each planet, moon, asteroid, etc. Not very
| pretty.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Exactly! I would rather see things the way my eyes would
| see them up close. The Webb photo seems unrealistic and
| photoshopped (even though it isn't).
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I think this is because photos from Earth are somewhat
| 'uniform', they're always the same angle, and because
| they're so far away, we basically always see only the day
| side from Earth, which makes them look a bit 'fake'.
|
| Meanwhile, the photos from the probes that actually went
| there are from more unusual angles and you can see some
| more amount of the night side.
|
| Similar to how images from something like the Himawari
| satellite (from geostationary orbit) quickly become a lot
| less visually interesting than photos from the ISS.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| I completely agree, the Voyager photographs have a certain
| je ne sais quoi to them that Webb never did. Of course
| there are differences in processing, and the visible vs
| infrared plays a role, but at the end of the day I think
| the biggest part is the various artifacts of the
| lens+sensor systems JWST has. This is most obvious in the
| lower quality images; compare JWST's Uranus and Voyager 2's
| Neptune for two "low-quality" images with artifacts. Or,
| for higher quality, Hubble vs JWST's Pillars of Creation.
| To me, the former could be on a poster on any kid's wall
| and the latter could not.
|
| That said, JWST does have some images with an ethereal
| quality of that bygone age of space. Its images of
| Jupiter's auroras and the Whirlpool Galaxy make me feel
| quite some things, and it did by far the best NGC 1433.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Uranus' orbit is 20x further from the Sun than Earth, which
| means it only gets 0.25% as much sunlight.
|
| Not sure what exactly that means for human eyesight, but it's
| probably less spectacular out there than we'd hope.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Human vision is strongly exponential in terms of brightness
| sensitivity. In photography we talk about "stops" which are
| powers of two of light intensity.
|
| Consumer digital cameras around 2005 could see maybe 9 stops
| for a single exposure. Now they can do maybe 10-14 (which
| means they're ~30x more capable of a range of light values).
|
| Human vision can handle adapting to a much wider range
| because we don't see with a single exposure. The iris
| adjusts, we saccade around the scene collecting data and
| mentally aggregating it. A good approximation is the iPhone's
| panorama mode. It's really recording video and adapting the
| dynamic range window as you pan, so the sun tends not to
| blown out the rest of the image.
|
| The main point I want to make is that outdoor sunlight on
| earth is indeed a million times more intense in terms of lux,
| lumens, candelas, or watts, than interior living (say lit by
| a nightlight or candle). This works out to 20 stops.
|
| - 100,000 lux outdoors on earth
|
| - 0.1 lux finding your seat in a theater
|
| So we can see already when the light is 0.0001% the power of
| "Earth, noon". We could see Uranus.
|
| Sunlight on earth is extremely intense! You feel it direct on
| your skin like being 2 feet from a fire. It damages your
| cells. It evaporates the sea and propels hurricanes. I'd we
| hadn't evolved to live with it, we'd find it quite
| intolerable.
| jl6 wrote:
| For comparison, daytime on Earth is about 100,000 lux while a
| typical moonlit night is 0.1 lux[0].
|
| Uranus gets 350 lux[1], which is similar to the light level
| at sunrise on Earth.
|
| So quite dim but not dark.
|
| [0]
| https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/58/1/1.31/2938119
|
| [1] https://oikofuge.com/same-sun-other-skies/
| jetrink wrote:
| You'd be surprised by the dynamic range of the human eye. I
| happen to have my camera on my desk, so I used it to take a
| couple measurements just now. It's a bright, sunny day.
|
| Pointed out the window[1]: 1/2000th
|
| The interior of my office[2]: 1/30th
|
| My office feels brightly lit to me, but the ambient light
| level is only about 1-2% of what it is outdoors. I estimate
| that 0.25% is roughly how bright it is indoors on an overcast
| day or outdoors at twilight on a clear day. It's dim, but
| people with unimpaired vision have no trouble seeing in that
| light level and the planet would still look spectacular.
|
| 1. Grass and trees with no sky in frame.
|
| 2. Shades open, light grey walls mostly. Same ISO and
| aperture.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I wish we were capable of sending manned missions to the gas
| giants. Uranus and Neptune are such mysterious and beautiful
| worlds, I'd really like to see them up close with my own eyes,
| however dim such an image would be.
|
| Maybe if we make it past the ecosystem collapse, one day people
| will take the Grand Tour in person. (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,
| Neptune)
| z2 wrote:
| I recall from the New Horizons media blitz that noon on Pluto
| is roughly the brightness of dawn or dusk, so the image of
| these planets should be bright enough!
| ianai wrote:
| Agree. The more I see of Uranus the more mysterious it seems.
| Like it's got to be much more complex than we imagine.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Like it's got to be much more complex than we imagine."
|
| That is, how it usually is ..
| dylan604 wrote:
| The Grand Tour is a hard one, and was only possible due to a
| convenient alignment of the planets that does not happen
| frequently. For example, if Jupiter is on one side of its orbit
| while Saturn is on the 180deg opposite point of its orbit,
| that's a really long way to go between destinations on the
| tour. I think going on a Grand Tour where you had to skip one
| of the planets due to a misalignment would be like going to
| Disneyland and never seeing Mickey. Even if you saw all of the
| other characters, it would still feel like you missed
| something.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| It wouldn't be too dim, your eyes have remarkable dynamic
| range. Brightness is experienced more like sound, with sensory
| capacity of many orders of magnitude, than a physical scalar
| sense like weight or distance.
|
| Wikipedia says [1] the solar radiation on Uranus is 3.4-4
| W/m^2. Imagine lighting up a square meter of wall with a 3W
| pocket inspection light, or a mood-lit room with just a few 8W
| bulbs. Reading might be a little bit of a strain after a while,
| but I think your eyes would quickly adjust.
|
| When New Horizons was going past Pluto, Nasa put out the
| #PlutoTime website [2]. Pluto is about 30 AU from Earth, Uranus
| is about 20 AU out, so at a particular moment around twilight -
| when it's bright enough to walk around without artificial
| lighting and to take a photo - it will be as bright as it is on
| Uranus. The widget is dead, but it's still accessible through
| archive.org. Unfortunately, it's no longer accurate, it seems
| to be linked to the time and date when the site was archived.
| I'm neither a web dev nor an astronomer, but I exported the JS
| and it seems to provide reasonable results:
|
| https://jsfiddle.net/9btumsj6/
|
| Anyone have an idea of what solar_angle should be to simulate
| Uranus or Neptune? Apparently, when the sun is -1.5 degrees
| below the horizon here, that's about right for Pluto
| illumination. Just reducing the angle by three from -1.5 to
| -0.5 changes the time by about 6 minutes of twilight...
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight#Intensity_in_the_Sola...
|
| [2]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20150827083531/http://solarsyste...
| bloopernova wrote:
| Thank you for a very interesting comment, I appreciate the
| work you put into it.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I wouldn't mind taking a closer look, but being inside of a gas
| giant seems questionable given the pressure. I've heard
| astronomers compare the atmosphere of some gas giants to the
| density of a 7-11 slurpee... and that sounds terrifying.
| gambiting wrote:
| The problem that most people aren't even aware of is that
| Jupiter(and maybe others? I'm actually not sure) is throwing a
| massive amount of radiation around - getting anywhere close to
| it would kill any human very quickly. It's a huge factor in any
| proposed missions to its moons - like, it would be awesome to
| explore Europa, the concept is fascinating, but its surface is
| _deadly_ due to radiation coming from Jupiter.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Yeah, the radiation was partly why I wrote "capable of
| sending people". You'd probably need quite a few metres of
| water ice surrounding your livable space if you don't want to
| get fried.
|
| Which makes me wonder: if a ship was covered in, say, 10
| metres of ice, would the top layer get irradiated and thus
| need to be replaced every so often? I wonder if it was left
| exposed to space, would the water ice sublimate away? Then
| "all" you'd need to do is replace the top layer.
|
| Humans safe behind ice while robots do the work isn't quite
| as romantic as _The Expanse_ but it 'll get the job done!
| lacker wrote:
| What is even the benefit of being physically located right
| next to Jupiter, if you have to stay enclosed in 10 meters
| of ice at all times? Sure, you have an hour lag or so to
| communicate from Earth, but that seems easier to solve than
| all the problems of shipping humans around.
| clort wrote:
| given that the moons are tidally locked, is it going to be
| safer on the far sides?
| gambiting wrote:
| Sure! It still leaves the issue of getting there, and you
| can't stay in the shadow of a moon the whole way there.
| ianburrell wrote:
| The radiation doesn't come from Jupiter but from its
| magnetosphere. The radiation comes from belts, like Earth's
| Van Allen belts, but much stronger. The Galilean moons are
| all inside the magnetosphere and Io is in the middle of the
| strongest belt.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Ah, the gas giants.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Utanus (and Neptune) are more accurately ice giants than gas
| giants.
| flkenosad wrote:
| Does James Webb do video?
| Symbiote wrote:
| I doubt it -- would anything move fast enough to be usefully
| recorded?
| nirav72 wrote:
| Most likely not. Other than maybe stitch several images
| together in post-processing. Although not sure what use video
| would be on JWST. It's mostly staring at distant objects where
| motion wouldn't be perceivable. Unless it's taking images of a
| planet with several orbiting moons. Even then, it would just be
| would a handful of frames stitched together here on earth.
| schainks wrote:
| No, but it does run Javascript:
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/18/23206110/james-webb-space...
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Unreal; you mean I could actually potentially write software
| for a space telescope?
| deadfish wrote:
| The first contact from aliens will surely be them exploiting
| this with an XSS attack to set window.location to a Rick Roll
| video.
| acqq wrote:
| "the language the scripts are written in is called Nombas
| ScriptEase 5.00e."
|
| https://brent-noorda.com/nombas/us/index.htm
|
| "Nombas doesn't exist any more. All the good stuff was sold
| to Openwave, then sold to someone else, then sold to someone
| else, then I lost track."
| _joel wrote:
| No, these are targets that are planned months in advance and at
| relatively long exposures in order to collect enough photons
| to, well, actually see the thing.
|
| You certainly wouldn't get 60FPS, that's for sure.
| petabyt wrote:
| Of a planet, I guess in theory it could take a 15fps video, I
| dont think the sensor was designed for that.
| hk1337 wrote:
| Only if you tip $20 or more.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Uranus is on its side. The moons orbits are on their side too,
| and do they also rotate on their sides, all with respect to the
| solar plane? The dance of the Sun in the sky must be very exotic
| for the moon folk of that mini system.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I think that due to angular momentum, they do all rotate
| aligned to the same plane.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| The large moons have zero inclination with respect to Uranus'
| equator but the smaller irregular moons are all over the
| place. Wikipedia has this nice graphic showing orbital
| distance (x), eccentricity (x error bar) orbit inclination
| (y), and moon size:
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/TheIrreg.
| ..
|
| The only thing missing from the graphic is each moons axial
| tilt with respect to either its orbit or the rest of the
| solar system.
| wyldfire wrote:
| The ring plane is aligned with the solar planetary plane?
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| No, not really. "aligned" would suggest some kind of
| connection. It is very likely a complete accident.
| Literally.
|
| It most likely that at some point Uranus was hit by a
| planet and the collision changed the spin axis. Must have
| been pretty early for everything else to be aligned with
| the new axis.
| wyldfire wrote:
| Sorry, I meant more something like "coincident" or
| "parallel".
|
| Probably a stupid question but how'd it get this vantage?
| Isn't JWST at a LaGrange point from Earth? Wouldn't that
| be on the same plane? I suppose it must not be in order
| to have taken this image.
| pvg wrote:
| Maybe you're missing the 'Uranus axis of rotation is
| super tilted' part? Its equatorial plane (along with its
| rings) is not at all 'parallel' to the ecliptic, that's
| what the toplevel comment is pointing out.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus#Axial_tilt
| tomkat0789 wrote:
| From your link;
|
| "Near the solstice, one pole faces the Sun continuously
| and the other faces away, with only a narrow strip around
| the equator experiencing a rapid day-night cycle, with
| the Sun low over the horizon. On the other side of
| Uranus's orbit, the orientation of the poles towards the
| Sun is reversed. Each pole gets around 42 years of
| continuous sunlight, followed by 42 years of darkness."
|
| Very different from Earth! Wow.
| alberth wrote:
| Real or not?
|
| Anyone else get frustrated with the accepted practice in
| astronomy to (a) alter colors and (b) show the non-visible light
| spectrum.
|
| Because it results in radically different images from what we can
| see with our human eye and its hugely misleading to the general
| public.
|
| NASA has a whole article on this subject; it's a great read.
|
| https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/science-behi...
| JohnMakin wrote:
| JWST is an infrared telescope. The human eye does not see
| infrared.
| swells34 wrote:
| I sure do. But at the same time, isn't this a near infrared
| camera, so outside the visible spectrum?
| ijustlovemath wrote:
| NIRcam studies objects in the near infrared, so invisible to
| human eyes. This is true of most of JWSTs instruments;
| everything you see is false color.
| malfist wrote:
| That's how photos are in general. No camera captures exactly
| what the eye sees.
|
| Is setting an ISO radically changing things?
|
| Is setting an exposure time radically changing things?
|
| Is having an RGGB bayer pattern radically changing things?
|
| Is having only a 91% quantum efficiency sensor radically
| changing things?
|
| The questions keep going, I could ask about hot pixel removal,
| denoise, contrast and saturation, wavelength response curves.
|
| Cameras aren't eyes.
|
| Photos aren't biochemical reactions.
| crazygringo wrote:
| No, there's a huge difference.
|
| Regular consumer cameras _are_ designed to be as close as
| possible to what the human eye sees. They 're very obviously
| chosen to be responsive to R, G and B. Not infrared, yellow
| and UVB.
|
| An image like this is _not_ meant to try to match the human
| eye.
|
| To try to say all cameras don't match the eyes is a false
| equivalence. Some are purposefully _trying_ to match, some
| are purposefully trying _not_ to (like this one).
| malfist wrote:
| I'd argue it isn't a false equivalence. Every time someone
| drags that contrast and saturation slider up they're doing
| something that's no different than assigning RGB to sulfur
| II, hydrogen alpha, and oxygen III.
|
| It's all false color to make something look good.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's photo editing, not camera settings like ISO or
| shutter speed.
|
| Cameras are still designed to try to be able to match
| what the human eye perceives, regardless of what you edit
| afterwards.
|
| An infrared telescope is not. Totally and utterly
| different. They're not the same.
| pengaru wrote:
| Considering it's from NIRCam I don't think there's reason to
| expect a "real" visible light image... that's not what this
| sensor does.
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| With my eyes, when I look at a light source I see light
| refractions (rays) coming from the source that people without
| astigmatism do not see.
|
| I do get what you are trying to say here and I know I'm taking
| your argument to the extreme, but... bear in mind that even 2
| randomly selected humans would see different things looking at
| the same object.
|
| Even though no human can see the light that JWST is capturing
| doesn't mean it is not there. The colors are false indeed
| (compared to what a typical human would perceive as color), but
| then we also would get absolutely no pictures from JWST to look
| at.
| tekla wrote:
| I prefer to be able to see things instead of black
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Because it results in radically different images from what we
| can see with our human eye...
|
| Good! That's why we have spent $10B on it!
| jacquesm wrote:
| What a lot of nonsense. There is absolutely nothing
| 'misleading' about this: the general public doesn't stand a
| chance trying to observe Uranus with the naked eye so
| regardless of what you would like to see you are always going
| to be dependent on a telescope (which alters the perceived
| size), possible color filters, color shifting in case you are
| looking at non-visible wavelengths and so on. The JWST is so
| interesting _especially_ because it can see wavelengths that we
| can not.
|
| If you want to take issue with something then I'd save my anger
| for the cameras that no longer show you what you are looking
| at, not for a scientific instrument doing exactly what it is
| meant to do and adaptations to show the output to the general
| public.
| FranOntanaya wrote:
| I think you can barely see the outer ring (R/2003 U 1) in the
| bottom left.
|
| I really hope we get a better look at the moons of Neptune and
| Uranus sooner than later. They seem to have lots of interesting
| history.
| jkestner wrote:
| If you're middle-aged, you might get a chance:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus_Orbiter_and_Probe
|
| It's the highest priority probe, but wouldn't get there until
| the 2050s. To borrow a thought from idlewords, we could be
| sending cameras to every large object in the solar system for
| way less than it's costing to develop the current Moon program
| ($93 billion through 2025).
| world2vec wrote:
| When will I stop giggling at headlines mentioning "Uranus"? Maybe
| never?
|
| Gorgeous images tho, everything seemed perfectly angled for a
| glamour shot.
| winwang wrote:
| I hope we don't stop giggling. Lighthearted humor should be
| kept alive! It was fun even in uni.
| throwup238 wrote:
| That looks like its straight out of an 1980s scifi book cover.
| TestUser00 wrote:
| Very Cool, it looks like a pearl floating in space
| SonicSoul wrote:
| astrology ignorant here.
|
| are those light rings portrayed this way because its debris
| orbiting at a very long exposure ?
| guhcampos wrote:
| *astronomy
| _joel wrote:
| Astrology? I think you mean Astronomy.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Astrology Ignorance is a Good Thing! Cultivate it.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| No; the rings are made up of tiny particles, so they appear
| contiguous. You'd have to get very close to see the individual
| chunks.
| neuronic wrote:
| To me it's kind of insane (again) that in the full picture behind
| Uranus there are several casual galaxies floating through space (
| https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2023/150/01H...).
|
| Probably capturing a bunch of civilizations with their own
| Caesars, revolutions and a variety of delicious cocktails in the
| background.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| And their own JWST And HN writing that comment. Millions of
| them.
| eutropia wrote:
| I rather prefer the wide shot that the featured image was cropped
| from: https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01HHFQ09W5PKSA6EBKJMW51R5M.png
|
| Image Description from Nasa site:
|
| > This image of Uranus from NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on
| NASA's James Webb Space Telescope shows the planet and its rings
| in new clarity. The planet's seasonal north polar cap gleams in a
| bright white, and Webb's exquisite sensitivity resolves Uranus'
| dim inner and outer rings, including the Zeta ring--the extremely
| faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet.
|
| > This Webb image also shows 14 of the planet's 27 moons: Oberon,
| Titania, Umbriel, Juliet, Perdita, Rosalind, Puck, Belinda,
| Desdemona, Cressida, Ariel, Miranda, Bianca, and Portia.
|
| > One day on Uranus is about 17 hours, so the planet's rotation
| is relatively quick. This makes it supremely difficult for
| observatories with a sharp eye like Webb to capture one simple
| image of the entire planet - storms and other atmospheric
| features, and the planet's moons, move visibly within minutes.
| This image combines several longer and shorter exposures of this
| dynamic system to correct for those slight changes throughout the
| observing time.
|
| > Webb's extreme sensitivity also picks up a smattering of
| background galaxies--most appear as orange smudges, and there are
| two larger, fuzzy white galaxies to the right of the planet in
| this field of view.
| leipie wrote:
| I just love almost all the dots, photobombing, are detailed
| galaxies instead of just stars
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| It is amazing. I really wish I could see that level of detail
| with my own eyes. Queue Battlestar Galactica rant
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPnx3zO3SDc).
| xeromal wrote:
| If you find yourself out in the Mojave desert camping in a
| new moon, you'll swear you can see stuff like this. It's
| almost unbelievable.
| riversflow wrote:
| > I really wish I could see that level of detail with my
| own eyes.
|
| Straying off topic, but be careful what you wish for. I
| have great eyesight, and have developed my ability to
| see/notice details considerably throughout my life. (Which
| btw is super under rated, "seeing" is about much more than
| just light being focused in your retinas, its incredible to
| me how things that used to look really complicated or
| looked a complete mess when I was a teenager are now just a
| bunch of components and as a result easy to see.)
|
| My experience is that I notice how imperfect everything is,
| constantly. I go to someones place they lived in for years
| and notice all kinds of things they never picked up on,
| mismatched moulding or paint or texture, wood grain not
| matching in furniture, light limescale on porcelain, heat
| marks, cammed out fasteners, fixtures that are not square,
| plumb and flush, bubbling peeling paint. I could go on and
| on.
|
| Being discerning is kind of a bummer if you can't put it to
| good use.
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| That is magnificent. Thanks for sharing.
| jcims wrote:
| I'm sure it's a challenge at some level but I like seeing the
| JWST 'fingerprint' on images.
| 0xfacfac wrote:
| Gotta say I chuckled when I read the headline.
| josefresco wrote:
| I'm going to enjoy sharing this headline with my family and I
| expect maximum eye rolls.
| jdksmdbtbdnmsm wrote:
| life is too short not to
| manojlds wrote:
| ...and when I saw the headline above the photo.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Journalists have been waiting their whole life to publish
| those headlines :-p
| sim7c00 wrote:
| + comments haha. i am so sorry.
|
| u so fat that: "Uranus' orbit is 20x further from the Sun than
| Earth, which means it only gets 0.25% as much sunlight."
|
| wish i was an astronomer :').
| jwcacces wrote:
| Were there Klingons?
| adolph wrote:
| its mostly gas, so no
| wiz21c wrote:
| Everytime I see these pictures I feel a little despaired... Are
| there people here who believe one day we could travel fast enough
| to go there ?
| jl6 wrote:
| NASA is planning a robotic mission launching in the 2030s,
| arriving in the 2040s.
|
| Humans? There are probably better destinations in the solar
| system that we'd go during the period between it becoming
| technically/economically feasible, and humans being replaced
| with robots.
| Falimonda wrote:
| Go there and do what?
| segasaturn wrote:
| Humans won't be landing on the surface of the Gas Giants
| anytime soon due to their hostile atmospheres, but many of
| their moons are prime candidates for human settlement!
| _joel wrote:
| I'm sure people said the same thing about being able to travel
| to the other side of the world in less than a day, when it used
| to take years. Yet here we are.
| digging wrote:
| I'm confused... What's causing your despair? Do you think we'll
| never be able to visit Uranus in human-compatible travel times?
| Assuming we (organic humans) survive this century, I'd consider
| it almost certain we'll find a way to make travel within the
| solar system a normal thing eventually.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >travel within the solar system a normal thing eventually.
|
| How? Science isn't magic. If you want to get to places in the
| solar system on human time scales, you have to go FAST. Mars
| already is about 6 months away in the IDEAL circumstances. We
| don't have a good idea of how to go faster than we can now
| without literally blowing up nukes behind our ship, and
| hoping we can magically ride the waves reliably, and even
| that is not exactly revolutionary in terms of speed.
|
| So now you're literally hoping for some scientific
| advancement that either bends space so that most things are
| "closer", allows humans to not die after a significant amount
| of down time but also makes humans not care about missing out
| on family and friends and making a brand new life anytime you
| want to go somewhere else, or a way to magically reach insane
| speeds. This is ignoring the fact that we don't even think
| massless propulsion is _possible_ , let alone useful, so we
| would be stuck with using electricity to accelerate the
| lightest particles we can manage to as near light speed as
| physically possible.
|
| People keep acting like science is some magic world and it's
| only a matter of time until science somehow does science
| fiction, but that's just as absurd as thinking it's only a
| matter of time until psychologists unlock the secret of
| telekinesis. It's fantasy. Reality has put very rough
| boundaries on everything, and while there is some wiggle room
| for new things to refine our understanding of the universe,
| any effects and forces we have yet missed would have to be so
| small or inconsequential as to be meaningless. If you think
| some future discovery would NOT be inconsequential, now you
| have to explain how it has hidden from us for all this time.
| Even "revolutions" in the field of physics that changed how
| we understand reality itself, like quantum anything, didn't
| totally change the math. Newton's equations are still mostly
| valid at human scales! The "wrong" model that caused the very
| Ultraviolet Catastrophe that lead to the discovery and
| building of quantum mechanics is still mostly correct for low
| frequency radiation!
| digging wrote:
| > any effects and forces we have yet missed would have to
| be so small or inconsequential as to be meaningless
|
| This is a level of unwarranted confidence far exceeding my
| own, in my opinion :)
|
| Uranus is 2.66 light-hours from the sun. At 0.01% light-
| speed, that's about 3 years. 3 years is a long time to
| travel, especially in the modern age, but not a long time
| to be alive, even for a human _today_. Is it possible we
| dramatically extend our lifespans or achieve technological
| immortality in the future? I certainly think so.
|
| Can we reach 0.01c traveling between Earth and Uranus?
| Maybe not, because we have to accelerate half way and
| decelerate the second half. But I would feel much sillier
| saying that sub-decade interplanetary travel is absolutely
| impossible than saying that it's possible. Than saying
| we'll unlock new materials and techniques that make it
| possible _eventually_. I 'm not even saying to expect them
| within a century. Think about _millennia_ of uninterrupted
| technological advancement driven by superhuman AI - you 're
| saying with certainty that it's not possible we'll figure
| out how to travel within our own solar system on human
| timespans after all that time? It'll be a boring future if
| we're already hitting the absolute limits of space travel
| and we've _just_ started.
|
| > Science isn't magic.
|
| No, magic is just science we haven't figure out yet.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _allows humans to not die after a significant amount of
| down time_
|
| Death appears inevitable, but there's little difference
| between a century and a millennium as far as physics is
| concerned. I don't think it's far-fetched to assume we'll
| crack this one eventually.
|
| > _and making a brand new life anytime you want to go
| somewhere else_
|
| This has been the norm for travellers for most of human
| history. The modern two-day circumnavigation /
| perceptually-instant transatlantic broadband is nice, but
| not _necessary_. The solar system is a light-day in
| diameter (order of magnitude), so a _round-trip_ by radio
| is faster than letters used to be.
| claar wrote:
| Absolutely, but we'll need to develop some future technology
| that allows multiple days of constant acceleration.
|
| At 2G constant accel/decel, it'll take ~8.5 days to get to
| Uranus, reaching a top speed of 2.3% of light speed (14.2
| million m/s), and experiencing 17 seconds of time dilation (htt
| ps://chat.openai.com/share/b93297e1-b089-46d1-8314-a2235b...).
| :)
| riversflow wrote:
| Unless we develop force fields[1] I don't understand how
| traveling at such relativistic speeds would work, at .023C a
| 1 gram micrometeor would have the same potential energy as 25
| tons of dynamite (100B Joules)
|
| Ice shielding sounds good, but then we are back to the
| tyranny of the rocket equation.
|
| [1] which we don't even have a path to, afaik. Straight scifi
| right now.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Assuming perfect efficiency in terms of adding energy to the
| velocity of an 80kg human payload, with zero other power
| usages, losses, etc, simply accellerating a human up to and
| back down from that speed takes about 1.6*10^16 joules, or
| about half of the daily output of the worlds nuclear
| reactors, or the ENTIRE volume of the Hindenburg as a bladder
| full of gasoline and a magic machine to extract 100% of the
| energy.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| We can reach those speeds using the technology of today;
| Project Orion remains entirely possible and could be built in
| this decade, if we so chose.
|
| We are gods of our solar system, bound only by ourselves.
| dgroshev wrote:
| This is incorrect, and I think this kind of low effort copy-
| paste of whatever ChatGPT came up with is actively harmful to
| the discussion. Honestly, I think this practice should be
| explicitly banned here.
|
| > Distance: The average distance from Earth to Uranus is
| about 2.6 billion kilometers, but this can vary greatly
| depending on the planets' positions in their orbits.
|
| Space.com (a relatively relatable source) thinks otherwise
| [1]:
|
| > Because the solar system is in constant motion, the
| distance between Earth and Uranus changes daily. The closest
| the two get is 1.6 billion miles (2.6 billion kilometers). At
| their farthest, they are separated by 1.98 billion miles (3.2
| billion km).
|
| ...which works out to ~2.9b km.
|
| We can also calculate it ourselves. Earth is ~0.15b km from
| the Sun [2], Uranus is 2.7-3b km from the Sun on average [3].
| Thus the distance varies between 2.65b km and 3.15b km, which
| means the average is (again) ~2.9b km.
|
| _Not_ 2.6b km as ChatGPT claimed.
|
| Which changes the result to 8.9 days.
|
| Which is not a huge difference, but would you know any better
| if ChatGPT said the distance is 5b km?
|
| [1]: https://www.space.com/18709-uranus-distance.html
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
|
| [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus
| z3phyr wrote:
| Of course. Its in our solar system. Although it is very far
| away, if we get on to it, we can plan it at a huge cost.
| fatbird wrote:
| Given how much is still unknown about the planets in our own
| solar system, I wonder why we haven't prioritized putting a
| satellite or two around each one, starting with Mars. We can
| obviously get the satellites there, and I'd imagine it's a lot
| easier to get better longitudinal data by watching it directly
| over time. Even something as simple as our current weather
| satellites over Earth would provide a ton of useful data.
| pvg wrote:
| We have? There have been piles of orbiter missions over the
| years to all the inner planets as well as to Saturn and
| Jupiter.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| It's exceptionally hard to financially justify exploration,
| when so many other problems could see substantial improvement
| given the costs required.
| floxy wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mars_orbiters
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Icy_Moons_Explorer
| KillerRAK wrote:
| The jokes just write themselves...
| tzs wrote:
| 2620 can't come soon enough [1].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0czFnIvKOJY
| dickersnoodle wrote:
| My inner middle-schooler is giggling over the headline.
| feoren wrote:
| I couldn't help it either. Astronomy is just going to be
| forever plagued by this name.
| gambiting wrote:
| It's a problem just in English, because for some reason that
| I really don't understand, in English it's pronunced like
| (ur)anus, instead of pronuncing it like the name of the Greek
| god it's named after - ooranos(Uranos).
| euroderf wrote:
| and if you shift the stress to the first syllable, it comes
| out as Urinous. Ya can't win.
| elwell wrote:
| first two syllables
| abledon wrote:
| really wishing HN had a LLM powered 'Sort by humor' feature
| right now
| denysvitali wrote:
| I can't believe I had to scroll this much. Thank you!
| GBond wrote:
| finally found my people
| queuebert wrote:
| I have a PhD in astronomy, and I did too.
| billiam wrote:
| It's gonna be super useful to train on Uranus data to help with
| understanding exoplanets, since many will be like Uranus.
| qayxc wrote:
| Just curious: how would that help exactly? So far we can get
| two relevant data points for exoplanets: mass or if we're lucky
| size and maybe spectra. That's one Uranus size, one Uranus mass
| and the atmospheric spectrum of Uranus. Since neither of those
| is variable (at least on human timescales) I don't see how a
| training dataset with one entry would help.
|
| Finding Uranus analogues would also be particularly challenging
| since we cannot expect to ever confirm one using telescopes,
| given that a Uranus orbit takes ~84 years and you need to
| observe at least 3 full orbits to confirm a planet.
|
| Any Uranus-sized object orbiting significantly closer to its
| host star (i.e. able to be confirmed within a human lifetime)
| would likely differ from Uranus as it would either receive
| substantially more energy from its host star or have a
| completely different host star altogether (e.g. a red dwarf),
| which may have an impact on its composition.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Tee hee.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Gorgeous...
|
| But I've always been curious, I've heard it both ways: If I were
| on a space ship exploring the outer planets looking out a
| regular-ass glass window, would the rings of Jupiter, Neptune,
| and Uranus even be visible to the naked eye? I mean I know
| Saturn's rings are incredibly apparent, but for the other 3 gas
| giants?
|
| For example, many of the Voyager pics of Uranus don't have the
| rings visible, and the ones that do are colored oddly and make me
| assume that this is some kind of massive false-color high-gain
| thing to make them visible.
| KyleBerezin wrote:
| I don't believe so. Many things you see in space like nebula,
| would not really be visible to the naked eye even if you were
| in the middle of them. Don't let the fact that primate eyes
| can't see it detract from the grandeur though.
|
| Even the planet itself would be dim, at 20AU from the sun, it
| would be 400x dimmer than the earth, close to the brightness of
| dawn/dusk on earth.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| > With its exquisite sensitivity, Webb captured Uranus' dim inner
| and outer rings, including the elusive Zeta ring - the extremely
| faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet
|
| This is pretty amazing. I knew Uranus required sensitive
| instruments, but didn't realize the payoff would be so rewarding.
| notsahil wrote:
| I never thought Uranus would be like this. Wonderful!
| runjake wrote:
| Neat! Voyager 2 took a high resolution _true color_ photo[1] of
| Uranus in 1986, as well, but you can 't make out the rings.
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus#/media/File:Uranus_as_s...
| sopchi wrote:
| Can you elaborate: why are the rings not visible on that image?
| Is it because they are outside the frame, or too faint, or
| don't appear in the visible spectrum? Something else?
| kokanee wrote:
| The rings are extremely dark, reflecting only 2% of incoming
| light. The James Webb image is an infrared photo, and doesn't
| show what the planet looks like.
| rebolek wrote:
| ...doesn't show what the planet looks like _to us_.
| ttul wrote:
| It's also why you can see galaxies in the background!
| kokanee wrote:
| Your emphasis on true color is worth underscoring. I think it's
| a bit unfair to publish a photo like this one from James Webb
| without providing a few less-stylized edits for comparison, and
| an explanation of what the colorization process entailed.
| Obviously as an infrared photo there isn't going to be any edit
| that gives us a great idea of what it would look like to the
| eye, but it seems like they chose the most wondrous-looking
| settings in photoshop on this one, as opposed to the truest.
| aaroninsf wrote:
| _Truest_ is a problematic word in this stuff, JW as you say
| doesn 't even see the visible spectrum, and I don't find it
| helpful to ask for the least-inspiring fiction of those
| available.
|
| Arguably there _is_ no "true" translation; the point of JW
| capturing what spectrum it does, is to reveal features
| obscured or invisible in the visible spectrum.
|
| Over the years I have come to reject the "what would the
| plain eye see" position as not helpful. We're tool-using
| monkeys and the phones we carry around now run supercomputers
| to quietly show not what the plain eye sees but something
| which works better for our needs--to be both evocative and
| information-rich.
|
| If and when we ever get a chance to gaze on Uranus ourselves,
| I myself imagine and hope it will be courtesy of some
| transformation of our embodiment that will look an order
| richer than even the most stylized images we have today,
| because they will be broad spectrum and be overlayed with
| semantic content rendered as perceptual to aid our executive
| functions... all of which will probably be running on some
| computation substrate other than our monkey mammal selves.
| Space isn't kind to those.
| lsaferite wrote:
| FWIW, according to the specs the JWST starts at 600nm,
| which means it does at least cover the red visible
| spectrum. (R from RGB being 600-700nm per my understanding)
|
| It seems a shame they didn't include the 400-600nm range as
| well.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > It seems a shame they didn't include the 400-600nm
| range as well.
|
| This seems to be a basic misunderstanding of the purpose
| of the telescope.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| True color, visible spectrum images could help garner
| public support for missions like this. When I see these
| images, I imagine future humans enjoying a fly by,
| looking out a large transparent window, and seeing these
| amazing views.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| What happens when the true color, visible spectrum images
| are exponentially less interesting and more dull? Does
| that increase public support? I don't think anyone in the
| "general public" cares or even realizes what exact
| wavelengths are captured and translated in every image,
| they care how awesome it looks.
|
| To my understand, you cannot see the rings of uranus in
| the visible range. And remember all those first images
| from the JWST, those garnered public support preeetty
| heavily and those were all infrared and translated.
|
| On the science side, some wavelengths just do not survive
| interstellar travel. You need the entire range to get the
| most data. Lots of times visible phenomena are just white
| or grey or blue anyways. When there's something that's
| actually more interesting in visible light, we'll see it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Let's also not forget that we have so many visible light
| telescopes already. JWST specifically needed to be a
| space platform way the hell away from the earth since it
| is essentially looking at heat. Being on earth or even in
| earth orbit would not be cold enough to make it worth
| while. Even still, we have to cool the systems because
| the heat from the electronics doing the science could
| interfere with its own readings. Once that coolant is
| gone, the platform will be pretty much useless. So it's
| not going to be wasting any time looking at things in the
| same spectrum that pretty much any telescope on the
| ground can do. Sure, we still have Hubble, but even the
| larger ground based telescopes with adaptive optics can
| see in more detail than Hubble at this point.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The mirrors on this are coated with an element that is
| specifically good at reflecting IR wavelengths. If it was
| meant for visible spectrum, it would potentially be
| coated with a different material.
|
| Complaining about JWST not making visible spectrum light
| images is like complaining that a hammer doesn't really
| work driving in a screw. It's not meant to do that, so
| stop trying to do it, and definitely stop complaining
| about it since it's just a misunderstanding of its
| purpose.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Chill out Dylan
| dandelany wrote:
| Imagine scientists discovered colonies of ants that
| compose elaborate symphonies of music that they perform
| for each other. Two problems: they're small, so the music
| is quiet. And for the same reason, it's extremely high-
| pitched and just sounds like mouse squeaks. In fact, half
| of it is ultrasonic, above the range of human hearing.
|
| Which device is more impressive and would garner more
| public support for the project: an amplifier which just
| makes the squeaks louder? Or one which also pitches down
| the squeaks into a range where we can actually perceive
| and appreciate the tune & dynamics of the underlying
| music?
| queuebert wrote:
| Wavelength ranges for astronomical detectors are often
| tuned to the emissions of particular phenomena and for
| what gets through interstellar and intergalactic gas and
| dust the best. Unfortunately blue to green isn't very
| useful by these metrics.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Isn't whole JWT infrared since there is generally much more
| info for astronomers compared to visible-for-human-eye
| spectrum? Also infrared passes better through cosmic dust and
| nebulae much better, going back to first sentence.
|
| And since showing infrared picture to folks who can't see in
| it is less than pointless, they just shift it all into
| visible to a 'place' on spectrum which makes most sense for
| given picture. There can be some choosing fancier shades done
| there for general public but I would be surprised if they
| completely re-painted original 'shift' just to look more
| fancy (happy to learn the facts if anybody knows in any
| case).
| matt_j wrote:
| The way I understand it, light from far away, very far
| away, is red-shifted because the universe is expanding at
| every point and the wavelength of the traveling light is
| stretched. Stretching the wavelength means light from the
| blue end of the spectrum moves closer to, or indeed, into
| the red end of the spectrum.
|
| If you want to look very deep into the past, say, 13
| billion years ago, any light from galaxies that old has
| traveled 13 billion light years PLUS however much the
| universe has expanded and will be red-shifted out of the
| visible spectrum, so you need an infra-red telescope to see
| it. Hence, JWST.
|
| You simply can't see these things without using instruments
| that can detect the right light.
|
| On top of that, everything in the universe emits light
| across a broad spectrum, above and below the visible
| spectrum. We can enhance our knowledge of these things;
| stars, planets, galaxies, etc by using instruments that can
| "see" infra-red, radio, x-ray, gamma ray and that is
| additional information on top of what our eyes can see in
| the visible spectrum.
| ComplexSystems wrote:
| Are they not in front of the planet in this picture?
| weaksauce wrote:
| honestly both of them look like bad clipart from the early
| 2000s. cool and all but they don't have the gravitas you'd
| want.
| tunnuz wrote:
| This is so beautiful, I'm sure this will be one of those shots
| that will inspire an interest in astronomy for generations to
| come.
| redm wrote:
| I have to say, with all the discussion about how magnificent the
| JWST was going to be, and now it is, I expected a better picture.
| It puts into perspective just how far away Uranus is, which is
| hard to wrap my mind around...
| doublemint2203 wrote:
| lmao
| theodric wrote:
| They didn't just get Uranus, they got the ring around it, too!
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Ursphincter ?
| dbg31415 wrote:
| > Urectum is the alternative name the planet Uranus was changed
| to in 2620 to avoid people making the "your anus" joke.
|
| https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Urectum
| VladimirGolovin wrote:
| What amazes me about this photo is how many galaxies are visible
| in it, just casually laying around. Probably hundreds in this
| particular photo, and likely thousands in each of the "Hubble
| Deep Fields" between the visible galaxies.
|
| For some reason, the original Hubble Deep Field image didn't
| viscerally affect me much -- but this one did. Maybe because it
| helped me to imagine just how much Hubble Deep Fields are there
| in our night sky.
| divbzero wrote:
| It's hard to imagine life _not_ being out there somewhere.
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| So that means colonoscopies are no longer necessary? j/k
|
| Amazing that the JWST is paying such dividends. The long wait was
| worth it.
| divbzero wrote:
| The angle of Uranus in this photo is striking compared to the
| photo of Neptune from last year:
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/new-webb-image-captures-cl...
| yieldcrv wrote:
| do any of the moons have any value to us? is there anything
| intriguing about any of them
| lencastre wrote:
| WOW
| domatic1 wrote:
| Am I the only immature one who laughed at the title?
| martincmartin wrote:
| My Ph.D. work was on a robot called Uranus. Let's just say it
| was the butt of many jokes. Like when my advisor was fixing it
| once, and I said "get your head out of Uranus!"
|
| https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~gwp/robots/Uranus.html
| andrew-dc wrote:
| Absolutely opened the comments for the jokes....
| kgwxd wrote:
| They knew exactly what they were doing. All the work put into
| that telescope was just building up to this very day.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| We'll just have to wait for it to be re-named in 2620
| throwup238 wrote:
| Why wait until the ass-end of civilization?
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| It's a reference to _Futurama_
| daveslash wrote:
| You called him out on not catching the reference. _You
| Wrecked Em '!_
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0czFnIvKOJY
| ahi wrote:
| I was recently diagnosed with rectal cancer. Damn near
| everyone's got high res images by now, why not James Webb too.
| alex_young wrote:
| Not quite the same ring as the original title of "NASA's Webb
| Rings in the Holidays with the Ringed Planet Uranus", but the
| rings are off a bit from your normal planet, so maybe that's
| OK?
| jader201 wrote:
| To be fair -- and unfortunately -- the original title is
| different: "NASA's Webb Rings in the Holidays with the Ringed
| Planet Uranus".
|
| The submitter actually changed it from the original title
| (unless the title has been updated since it was submitted).
| userbinator wrote:
| I think it's a base human nature to find humour in such things.
|
| As the saying goes: "You can grow old, but you don't need to
| grow up."
| legitster wrote:
| We really need a national program in the US to change the
| pronunciation. It would be more accurate to actually pronounce
| it "ooranus".
|
| ...butt yes I giggled.
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