The Astronomy Thread

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Captain Suave

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its been a year+ and i still havent seen a single good JWST image

It's an infrared telescope. All the images will look weird to laypeople. The point is science, not pictures you find pretty.
 
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Loser Araysar

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Cool story bro, were you thinking it was going to get pictures of Jesus's sphincter or something?

It's just a telescope with a mile long waiting list to do scientific stuff; the vast majority of which is going to look lackluster to people not on that list.

Weird how this didn't stop Hubble from taking great shots.

Wew lad gimme some more of those black and white Saturn shots
 
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Tuco

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The intent isn't to create cool images, but instead to do "research", but it's hard for a lay person like myself to understand how this research advances human technology.


For example, in Webb maps surprisingly large plume jetting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus - Interaction between moon’s plumes and Saturn’s ring system explored with Webb "Webb maps surprisingly large plume jetting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus"

the NASA press release: Webb Maps Large Plume Jetting From Saturn’s Moon Enceladus is largely the same. Their findings: https://psg.gsfc.nasa.gov/apps/Enceladus_JWST.pdf are focused on the details which is fine.

It could be that this study causes a breakthrough in water vapor capture approaches or habitability of subsurface oceans, such that as we start increasing out industry in space we use this information to guide our techniques. It could also be that it has as much significance as if they pointed the JWST to my butthole and captured me cracking a particularly large rat. I think in general NASA could do a better job tying the findings of studies to their core mission when they announce findings to the public.


The only mention I found is in their proposal in https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/phase2-public/1250.pdf where in their abstract:

ABSTRACT
Do the icy moons, Europa and Enceladus, host habitable conditions at submerged hydrothermal vents? We propose to perform high spatial and
spectral resolution observations of the jets emanating from these moons, measuring volatile abundances and isotopic ratios. Such measurements will
reveal unprecedented information regarding the processes acting beneath the moons’ thick ice crusts, and the potential for habitability of the subsurface oceans.

they discuss how the findings could evaluate the habitability of subsurface oceans on planetary bodies. In my opinion that's the driving information the public should be introduced to, the big picture and end-goal. Pair that with a cool picture captured from the telescope and you've got something that would compel taxpayers to support additional funding for JWST / NASA / ESA / etc.
 

Sanrith Descartes

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Dumb question, but if these are IR images and the rings of Saturn look white and brighter than the planet, does that mean the rings generate/retain some sort of heat?
 

Cybsled

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While that is disappointing, it at least means we can potentially start measuring that with other exoplanets
 

Big Phoenix

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Red Dwarfs are supposed to be pretty bad candidates for habitable planets. Tidal locking, sporadic violent outbursts and low amount energy output make them unlikely hosts. I know people will say they live for up to a trillion years and it gives time for the star to stabilize, but how long does a planet have? Radioactives decay, cores cool, atmospheres are lost to space, orbits decay or become unstable etc.

In general most stars are bad candidates for habitable planets, iirc only around 15-20% of stars in the universe are like our Sun or the slightly smaller K class stars.
 

meStevo

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More IR Saturn.

1688148608591.png
 
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Furry

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That’s silly an absurdly unlikely, and there’s be a lot issues on the inside part that would also make having an atmosphere on top of even more absurdly unlikely.

That said when you talk about something as big as the universe, absurdly unlikely things begin to happen with frequency.
 
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Captain Suave

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That’s silly an absurdly unlikely

It might not violate any laws of physics in abstract, but for a planet of any meaningful size I'm sure it requires material with impossible strengths in order to keep it from collapsing to its center of mass.
 

Ukerric

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It might not violate any laws of physics in abstract, but for a planet of any meaningful size I'm sure it requires material with impossible strengths in order to keep it from collapsing to its center of mass.
Yes. On a small planetoid, it's possible, but a large mass above the spheroid limit will absolutely collapse.
 

Tuco

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An earth like planet is pretty lulzy, but I'd be curious if there was any kind of donut shape with any kind of rotational speed, composition, distance to a sun etc that would be stable without requiring a contiguous iron composition or something.

Feels like any kind of centrifugal force that would keep the center from collapsing would also cause the outside to expand away from the center.

Maybe a planet orbiting near the sun closely enough to pull it apart? Lol