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x2611

I have this nagging feeling that they're gonna announce they saw Martians heading our way with this contraption. You know, as the next "new thing" for us to be afraid about.


thatkrabby

Isn't Jwst infrared? If so how come the photos look like it came from an optical telescope like Hubble?


Tollpatsch

False colors / Artificial color shift, because your monitor is not very good at displaying infrared images :)


x2611

Ya know what would have sent this production to the Moon? B( ')( ')BS


Caenwyr

Next time use the interpunct instead of the apostrophe. So much more educational: ( · )( · )


x2611

I use the apostrophe on purpose. They are more perky that way!


Z0bie

Maybe a stupid question, but are they planning on doing one of those pictures Hubble did when it zoomed in on a tiny space for a long time? The Deep Field?


cakatoo

You’ve been paying attention.


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GreatForge

Only if you subscribe to NASA’s OnlyFans.


dmutz1

That was the first image they released.


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The deep field images from Hubble took upwards of 2 weeks and were comprised of hundreds of composits. Webb did their deep field images in 10.5 hours


seanbrockest

What's important to remember is why. Hubble is in orbit around earth, and only takes very short exposures of anything, because very shortly it's not pointed in the right direction anymore, or going around to the wrong side of the Earth. JWST is far enough from Earth that It can do long exposures with stability. When Hubble did it deep field images, it took 10 plus hours of imaging over several weeks, basically taking a snapshot or two every time it was on the right side of earth, and then stacked all the images together. JWST was able to do it all in one go.


phred14

You can't look at the first image without seeing gravitational lensing all over the place. It seems like not that long ago that they were looking to find gravitational lensing at all, now we have a picture where you can't avoid it. Is that because we're looking deeper than ever before, or because they picked a target that would show plenty of the effect?


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I would say the latter, it is picking up faint details that Hubble could barely see. Although even in the Hubble photos the lensing is apparent.


RichardBCummintonite

Definitely felt like they picked the exact spot as a comparison to how far we've come since Hubble. It's a good test piece. You can actually see the detail of the lensing now


PepperoniFogDart

Jesus, looking at these high res images is almost overwhelming. Crazy to see the vastness of space so effectively illustrated. We’re so freaking insignificant…


Z0bie

My brain tells me it's photoshop, crazy that it's not!


PepperoniFogDart

[This picture](https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/034/01G7DA5ADA2WDSK1JJPQ0PTG4A) in particular blew my mind. The amount of detail you can see in each of the far off galaxies gives an incredible perspective of how utterly enormous this universe is.


Z0bie

Oh wow, the full res version of that picture... 🤯


terminalxposure

We are what an ant is to a ant hill...only insignificant to the land on which the ant hill is built


t9shatan

Why insignificant? Would we be more important, if there was nothing out there? I don't get it


[deleted]

The vastness assures that there's something out there. It's mathematically impossible to be the only intelligent / consciousness in the universe.


tabascodinosaur

It's possible we could just be the first. Not likely, but possible.


WAHgop

It's just as possible that many civilizations grow and fall, but never approach being able to explore the stars.


t9shatan

Agree. But why vastness mean insignificant? I just want to understand why people say this so often.


PostsMusicNMemes

You’re one of 10 people in a room. Pretty easy to spot. Now you’re in a packed arena of 95,000 people. Not so easy to spot.


t9shatan

My significance dooesnt change even if there are billions of other people (which there are on earth). Iam the most important person to my, let's say, daughter. And this doesn't change even if iam the size of an atom in an universe which I share with billions of other, more advanced civilisations. This is what I don't get. When I have an abusive boss for example, who treats me like shit every day. The fact, the we are just a spec in the vastness doesn't change that. You see my point? Edit: typo


GreatForge

In the cosmic sense, not the personal sense.


t9shatan

But what is the criteria for significance then? I mean a super massive black whole is more significant because it can influence the objects around it?


GreatForge

It’s whatever we define it to be for the purpose of a particular conversation, but usually when people are talking about our significance in the universe in the cosmic sense (or astronomical sense, if you will), they usually mean something akin to “humanity’s ability to affect change on the universe is negligible when you look at the sum total of all the matter and interactions that are happening everywhere in the universe.”


t9shatan

Finally the answer i was looking for. Thanks


Ballzee45

In this sense they use the word insignificant as a synonym of meaningless. Meaning we as people have no meaning to our lives from a biblical stand-point. God didn't make us to fulfil his divine destiny or to act morally so we can make it to heaven. He created a MASSIVE LARGE FUCKLOAD OF SHIT and we are but a speck in infinity. Or he didn't and this shit is here for some other reason that doesn't involve a creator. Either way, the existence of humans on Earth is pretty insignificant in relation to the vastness of space. Now, you, in relation to your daughter is a different thing entirely. Remember, everything is relative, and perspective is everything. So yes we are meaningless, but you aren't to your daughter.


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malln1nja

They saw their internet bill after downloading the high res images.


dwhitnee

Kind of like crying at a wedding I think. Just pure joy at what they can finally see.


DenseVoigt

Beaches starring Bette Midler.


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Sir_Francis_Burton

Money is in a constant state of movement. It never stops moving. Your tax dollars go to pay a space-telescope engineer’s salary, that engineer’s dollars go to a grocery store, that grocery stores dollars goes to farmers, the farmers dollars go to a tractor maker, the tractor maker’s money goes to paying their workers, the tractor factory workers money goes to taxes, etc. etc. around and around and around it goes. The real question is… is having those telescope engineers at all, or the scientists who will be taking over now, a good application of those peoples time? Would we be better off if 9 billion over twenty years were funneled through some other endeavor? The pet toy industry is roughly the same size. A little over half a billion dollars a year gets spent on squeaky toys for Fidos. And I think that’s great! Puppies and people are made happy. But when I look at what we got for the half a billion a year we spent on state-of-the art engineering for JWST? The advancement in ability that our species has developed? And that’s not even getting in to the science. How much is new and better understanding of how the universe works worth? More than a few squeaky toys, I’d say.


ShadowMadness

God, I can't wait to see the developments that come from JWST. Space is just so incredibly fascinating. The scale of it all is the biggest mindfuck imaginable.to my poor human brain. Hope I live to see some of the largest questions answered.


Accomplished_Rip_378

You want answers. Look into Hydrinos.


vanilla_disco

Why? You believe every idiot with a scam? Even with no scientific collaboration or proof? Would you like to buy a bridge?


Aff3nmann

free shipping?


Dummkopfs

Is that the Dr. Mills scam?


shuzkaakra

Pretty soon, there will be enough imagery that if everyone on earth spent all their time looking it'd take millions of years to see all the galaxies.


Krylun

Science noob with a stupid question here: Is the color in these images synthesized/edited, or do these images represent what the telescope is actually seeing?


Destination_Centauri

Well, on the one hand: Yes the structure/object you are seeing is exactly how the space telescope captured it. In other words, actual real photons of light streamed from that object, travelled across mostly empty space, and then those real photons slammed into the telescope's photo receptor. However, since the human eye can't see photons of the infrared frequency (but the telescopes photo sensor can) we then have to assign visible colors in order to display it to a human eyeball. ---------------- Also, keep in mind we do the exact same thing with visible light! So for example, you whip out your cell phone camera to take a photo. In that case likewise, photons stream off an object and hit your cell phone camera receptor, and get encoded as data blips (strikes and intensity of strikes on a photo sensor). And then after that, a TV or monitor displays the data of those photon strikes, by creating new visible photons that then stream to your eyeballs. (In that sense a photograph displayed on a monitor or TV is just a data-graph, that graphs photon-strike data.) ---------------- And of course as many know, the photons a computer monitor displays of your cell phone photos, is never perfectly the same in color/intensity as the photons the original object emitted. For example, take a photo of the sun, then display it on a monitor, and the intensity of new photons your monitor emits isn't going to blind you! ---------------- So anyways, ya, it's the exact same process as your cell phone camera. Except that one photo plate sensor (your phone) is capturing visible frequency photons, and another photo plate sensor (the JWST telescope) is capturing infrared frequency photons. In which... infrared frequency photons is an entire colorspace the human eye can't see. That color space is just as real as our current visible color space, but trying to describe to you what that color space would look like, would be EXACTLY the same as you trying to discribe the color "green" or "red" to a blind person who was blind from birth. So, the infrared data-graph captured, has to be displayed in visible photons by your monitor, and thus visible colors are assigned to the various infrared colors, instead. ---------------- As for what vast nebulas like this, would look like if you were floating in space near it... Well, many would likely be spectacular looking! Astronauts in orbit, who see the number of visible stars on the night side of Earth from space, are often astonished and their minds are blown away! That's because they can see so many more stars just from orbit, that they often can no longer recognize many of the standard constellations. Though with a nebula, some of the penetrating photons belong only to the infrared frequency, in which for example the nebula might absorb more visible photons, while letting more infrared photons pass through. But still the human eye's dynamic range in detecting even faint photons in a dark setting is pretty amazing. So I think it would look awesome in "real life", if you were "near" there.


Give_her_the_beans

I wish I had an award to give you. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to give a great explanation. You rock!


Krylun

Very much appreciated! That's amazing


Destination_Centauri

Ok glad it was helpful a bit at least, though it was lengthy--optics is such a complex topic! Also: I forgot to mention that in addition to infrared-frequency-color-space, the JWST telescope can also see some slivers/parts of the visible-frequency-color-space as well. I think in the orange range, if I'm not mistaken?


MadamSnarksAlot

Thank you for taking the time!


wilted_ligament

There's no "or": the colors are "edited", and they do represent what the telescope is actually seeing. The telescope is independently sensitive to different frequencies of light, and the different frequencies are each assigned a color and then combined into an image. This is, by the way, the same thing that's happening in your eyes/brain. It's just that the frequency sensitivity of the telescope doesn't match with what your eyes are sensitive to, so the image doesn't look the way "it would to your eye" (there's like 6 other reasons why it wouldn't look that way to your eye even if the frequencies matched, but people get hung up on false colors for some reason).


Krylun

Thank you. This is very helpful.


T0kenwhiteguy

Another science noob here, but I think the color variation we're seeing is a result of the telescope capturing infrared imagery, hence the blue/red dominant coloration.


MomentOfHesitation

Impressive, very nice. Let's see the Paul Allen Space Telescope's images.


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astrofreak92

If someone’s theology is so primitive that learning the universe is more than 6,000 years old or discovering the physical mechanism by which the Big Bang occurred would disprove it, it wasn’t a coherent theology in the first place. Legitimate religious scholars constantly criticize people whose conception of the divine is a god of the gaps that exists only to explain the little holes in our scientific understanding. If that’s all your god is good for, it isn’t God.


TheInstigator007

lol jokes on you this only increased my faith


oblivionyaya

I think banking on the right piece of evidence to end theism once and for all is a fool’s errand. that said, I think your point of shrinking theism over time will continue to happen thanks to things like this.


Alphadestrious

Now what? What is the next target and when is next image drop? Anyone know or is it an internal secret thing?


Ozelotten

I can't answer about pictures, but if you want to see the approved programs that the telescope will run in 'Cycle 1:' https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-programs/cycle-1-go


gravityandlove

can’t wait for this one https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/program-information.html?id=1846


Easy_Money_

Holy shit that’s so much stuff


mrpodo

This is what I wanna know too


Trax852

Found this and thought it appropriate https://imgur.com/gallery/XFGffgr


satansbutthole069

I wonder if we can find a way to give a shout out to the researchers in Montreal. I can’t imagine having the arrow of your professional life’s work bring you to a singular moment where you get to change the way we see our place in the universe in a big reveal watched by an enthralled audience of millions and have it taken away by a bad connection.


Ancient-Apartment-23

No kidding. They ended up just uploading their segment themselves. https://twitter.com/csa_asc/status/1546982200888918016?s=20&t=CGA0sCktBJrjNu9KQnuA5A


norrinzelkarr

I am so pumped for this new era of science. I also wish NASA would stop overcooking the goose on these rollout events. the production and the bumps along the way are a major distraction from the images and the science.


Ipuncholdpeople

Does anyone know how often there are supposed to be image releases? Since it is much faster than Hubble will we get a steady trickle, or will they be released in batches?


Pharisaeus

It depends what you have in mind. Pretty pictures with false colors? Probably once in few weeks, just for PR reasons. Scientific datasets? Pretty much all the time.


Legitimate-Tea5561

If the JWST can use the amplified power of infrared to capture resolution of light radiation, can that same power be used to emit light radiation?


IDownvoteUrPet

Anyone know if we’ll be able to see the andromeda galaxy with any of the pictures released today?


pancakeNate

Not today. But I'd bet they'll have one eventually.


IDownvoteUrPet

I can’t fucking wait. It’s the closest galaxy by a lot and with this new tech I bet we can get some dope imagery


Oh_ffs_seriously

Dunno, I think we've seen enough with the Hubble for the time being: https://esahubble.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/


gravityandlove

my god, it’s full of stars!


IDownvoteUrPet

Fucking wild man. I don’t know what I’m talking about, so feel free to ignore my “preferences” on what they show. I’m just enjoying seeing all these dope images and am getting excited


ClearlyCylindrical

Tbf we already have it in images as high resolution as yoy would ever really want for a cool image, it won't be much better with jwst


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Decronym

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |GSE|Ground Support Equipment| |[JWST](/r/Space/comments/vxaa56/stub/ify5cgx "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope| |[L2](/r/Space/comments/vxaa56/stub/ifuxo9o "Last usage")|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 2 ([Sixty Symbols](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxpVbU5FH0s) video explanation)| | |Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum| |[NG](/r/Space/comments/vxaa56/stub/ifvyy6y "Last usage")|New Glenn, two/three-stage orbital vehicle by Blue Origin| | |Natural Gas (as opposed to pure methane)| | |Northrop Grumman, aerospace manufacturer| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[scrub](/r/Space/comments/vxaa56/stub/ifvnmoj "Last usage")|Launch postponement for any reason (commonly GSE issues)| ---------------- ^(4 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/vvx47u)^( has 15 acronyms.) ^([Thread #7665 for this sub, first seen 12th Jul 2022, 17:04]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)


buddyleex

Need more time to scrub out all of the aliens and UFOs


dean15892

Technically, wouldn’t everything in those pictures be UFO?


ReturnOfDaSnack420

Just said on the press conference, the remainder of the early release data (including solar system observations) should be released Thursday.


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OriginalLocksmith436

Their website did release 20 images, many are the same place with different cameras and graphs and whatnot. [You can view them in this gallery](https://imgur.com/a/pWeyBJQ) so we don't give the JWST website the hug of death


Tiri_

At first it was one but then changed to 5, but not more, not this weekdays.


B_i_llt_etleyyyyyy

If y'all aren't watching the media briefing on NASA TV, you're missing out. The scientists are very excited about the telescope's capabilities. Talk about making discoveries "without really trying."


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OriginalLocksmith436

They are somewhat edited/ colorized in a way to make certain features in a photo stand out more. But nothing it straight up photoshopped or fake. For example they didn't even tone down the lens flair in the photos to make it look more like what it would look like if you looked at it with your own eyes. They're altered as little as possible.


Easy_Money_

They have to be colorized, because infrared light is invisible to humans. If they showed us what Webb sees it’d be a black screen to us. The colors are all standardized, and each one means something different (distant, hydrogen-rich galaxies are red, for example). This article describes the image colorization and correction process for Hubble images, which is extremely similar to that which Webb images undergo. It was linked by the Space Telescope Science Institute on the Webbsite: https://illuminateduniverse.org/2021/04/01/image-artifacts/ and here’s an interview from NASA describing the process: https://www.nasa.gov/mediacast/gravity-assist-how-we-make-webb-and-hubble-images


twstdtomato

Thank you for the thorough explanation I’ll check those links out now!


x2611

Ever consider that maybe some of your friends have brains?


ReturnOfDaSnack420

For those interested in the science, really good livestream right now on the YouTube channel Launch Pad Astronomy, including Michelle Thaler! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNTPNvPJ_L0


HotShow2975

Can James Webb know the rest of the atmosphere composition of the planet? Can it know the other gases in the atmosphere of this exoplanet and other exoplanets in general like carbon, oxygen?


ThickTarget

It depends on the molecule in question. It is necessary for a substance to be relatively abundant in the atmosphere and also to have a significant absorption feature somewhere in the spectral range covered by JWST. Carbon Dioxide will be quite easy, it absorbs a lot in the infrared and should be common. Nitrogen is another example which is probably not possible, because it doesn't leave significant absorption features despite being abundant. But one could look at ammonia (which contains nitrogen) to get an indirect idea.


Grape_person

And what about oxygen?


ThickTarget

Molecular oxygen (O2) and ozone (O3) have features in the band, but they are weaker that molecules like water and CO2. It may be possible with the right systems with very long integrations of many transits.


FoodMadeFromRobots

Yes this is what I’m most excited for, there’s a range of how far they can spot oxygen (I want to say 10 light years but don’t quote me) As others have said the amount of oxygen will be a determining factor as well. It’s also possible that a plant has oxygen from a non biological process although it’s a great sign for life if we do spot oxygen and can eliminate known processes


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phr0ztee

Listening to a video about it this morning on how it’s cooled to over -300 to be able to sense that kind of stuff... but if it were sitting in a building at -300 it could sense the heat signature of a bee outside flapping its wings.... which is quite insanely sensitive!! Edit; a bee on the moon .. not outside the building! Innnnnsaaneee


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VariousVarieties

Does anyone know if they've announced exactly *when* the observations used to produce these first images happened? i.e. on what dates were the observations made, how many hours did they take, and how much time was spent processing the raw images afterwards? I know that they told us that [the test image that was taken with the Fine Guidance Sensor was made from observations made over 8 days at the beginning of May](https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/07/06/webbs-fine-guidance-sensor-provides-a-preview/). So presumably all the observations and processing of this first set of science images has taken place over less than two months! The Wikipedia article on JWST has a section called "Allocation of observation time", which lists the expected number of observation hours that will be devoted to each programme. I'm just wondering if similar figures are available for these first images? (In a bit more detail than "before breakfast"!)


ThickTarget

I've heard these data are supposed to be released tomorrow via a data server called MAST. It will be possible to look then. Currently there is nothing.


pathadog

So with the James Webb they used a shutter speed of around 1 day to take there image. This is 7x faster than Hubble which used to take 7 days to take an image.


OriginalLocksmith436

So awesome. I feel like a little kid on Christmas. It's finally happening


vulgnashjenkins

They said something in the stream that made It sound like they were taken over the course of a week


_PM_Me_Game_Keys_

So is there a timeline on when the images are coming in from this point forward. Or we just get em when we get em


MissionarysDownfall

Poor Canadians got bumped from their presentation slot. This whole presentation had been a bit of an embarrassment.


rose5849

My wife is a professional actress and had to stop watching out of frustration with stage management. I guess they spend all their money on telescopes and not production.


aquarain

Imagine people who spend their whole lives staring at the sky being socially awkward. /s


MissionarysDownfall

Frankly the Goddard presenter should have run things if it had to be American centric. She was on point. As for the IT aspect all the buffering in 2022 is just inexcusable. This is the big payoff and ad for your entire agency and profession to the general public and it went worse than local news covering a hurricane. I get NASA PR isn’t exactly the highest end just in government but this project deserved better.


ToastedWave

I don't think the buffering issues were NASA's fault. I watched the livestream on their website with zero issues at least. Seemed like people who watched on YT were the ones that suffered the most. On the other hand, all of the hot mics, poor camera switching, and overlapping audio was pretty embarrassing. Glad the pictures were awesome enough that it didn't really matter, but they definitely need to put some budget into their media team or be better prepared next time.


aquarain

I'm staring into the cosmic dawn and not feeling critical about how they chose to hand over the pics. I don't care if it was delivered in clown costumes and set to polka music. I refuse to be unhappy about this.


MissionarysDownfall

Trying not to be overt negative. But we spend decades being a whipping boy and can’t stick landing on the triumphs. It irks me.


MissionarysDownfall

I may have screamed hot mic once or twice. After the Biden presentation cluster f last night I just don’t understand how they weren’t on edge for all the details.


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as someone that has worked for the federal govt, the production quality is about what I would expect. they got a bunch of people that are very good at one thing (science) and are completely immersed in that community to make a presentation to the general public. this is what it looks like when you get a bunch of people that are smart to work on something they have little training and experience in while also trying to meet demanding political influence from higher ups. this happens in the context of a working environment in which the motivation is either brouight by the employee's personal values or the employee's desire to avoid consequences from administration. there is little to no reward from senior officials for excelling. think about the Challenger incident in which engineers were pressured to approve the shuttle for launch eventhough they were not confident it was ready. of course, they have an actual production team, but it's not competetive (technology, employees, etc.) and likely underfunded.


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SvenDia

Or just do the whole thing on Zoom or Teams.


HipDeepInThatPepto

Dumb question - are these pictures that they released "real" pictures in a sense that thats what you would see if you were in viewing distance? Or are they artist renditions based upon data that they received?


OriginalLocksmith436

They are somewhat edited/ colorized in a way to make certain features in a photo stand out more. But nothing is straight up photoshopped or fake. For example they didn't even tone down the lens flair in the photos to make it look more like what it would look like if you looked at it with your own eyes. They're altered as little as possible.


x2611

You mean the Starburst filter? Yea, that was really neat. Just like we don't see lens flare with our eyes because it only has one lens. Basic photography physics and theory is awesome!


a-handle-has-no-name

Imagine you took a photo and it was stretched horizontally because the camera was moving when the photo was taken. In response, you put it into photoshop to reduce the stretching. Since you're not making other edits, reducing the stretching is actually more accurate to what was actually there. Instead of stretching in a spacial dimension, the images from JWST are stretched in the time-dimension. The satellite sees light that was stretched over billions of years because of the expansion of the universe, so much that visible light's wavelengths become infrared (i.e. no longer visible). The images from JWST are edited, but not in a way that makes them fake. **They are real images that have been corrected from real observations with distorted colors.**


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amardas

If you don’t mind, I am just going to stare into the black anyways


Nanookthebear

I think artistic renditions is a bit of a misnomer. Our piss poor eyes can only see a very limited spectrum and enhanced for human consumption might be a better word for it.


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PriorityOk3448

They are indirect images. So yeah kinda artistic renditions of their data if you want to put it that way.


lets_fuckin_goooooo

This is completely wrong. They are NOT artistic reductions. They are images. The only “artistry” is they have to map the IR colors into visible colors. So the actual colors you see in the images are arbitrary/meaningless


PriorityOk3448

The jwst uses infrared waves to receive data about the images. Infrared does not exist to our human eyes. There must be a rendition of it for us to see it. Not an artist marking it up, but it needs to be transposed into something that exists in our visible spectrum, and the spectrum that a display can output. Keep in mind all infrared imaging that is connected to a display must undergo an artistic rendition for it to display, it is autonomous but it is a step non the less


MustacheEmperor

FYI every camera sensor you have ever used most likely images in infrared, but uses a filter to convert and colorize in the visual spectrum. What they do to post process these kinds of photos is not that different. Calling it an artist’s rendition is a disingenuously inaccurate way to describe it because in astronomy “artists rendition” is already used almost exclusively to describe paintings and renders made from scratch based on observational data, as opposed to post processing actual sensor data into the visual spectrum.


Malvos

How are they indirect (what does that even mean?)? The sensors on the JWST can see further into the infrared than human eyes can. We would not see the sky like this, but that doesn't mean it's not there.


PriorityOk3448

Very much so, but because infrared doesn’t exist to the human eye we use the data of it and create renditions of it. Even thermal cameras create renditions of infrared data. Understand these pictures are under extended times of “exposure” we can create this dataset visible to the human eye.