James Webb Telescope Updates

[SelfSim]

Now this is impressive.

The image in the top left hand corner is the Hubble image of the quasar with the sensationally catchy name of SDSS J165202.64+172852.3 which is insignificant in appearance when compared to the Webb images.
The Webb images show the Doppler shifted gas from the galaxy cluster with a doubly ionized oxygen component which was mistaken by scientists from the late 19th to early 20th century as the mysterious element Nebulium.

Motions of Gas Around an Extremely Red Quasar (NIRSpec IFU)

I can only imagine the quasar related conspiracy theories from the long-forgotten Dunderbolts site, following that JWST series of images!

 

[sjastro]

I can only imagine the quasar related conspiracy theories from the long-forgotten Dunderbolts site, following that JWST series of images!

The Dunderbolters have been at it boldly proclaiming JWST has confirmed the electric universe.
Look at the following video at your own peril.

 

[SelfSim]

The Dunderbolters have been at it boldly proclaiming JWST has confirmed the electric universe.
Look at the following video at your own peril.

Ahh .. you're just bein' 'one of those ol' fogies', (12:55 min mark), clingin' to yer ol' beliefs .. because the 'standard cosmology model is 100% outdated', (13:09 min mark) .. I mean between 'experiments in the lab' and 'JWST photographs confirming' what we believe about 99.99% plasma throughout the universe and the 'universe being electric' ..

I mean, what hope is left there for all us 'ol' fogies'??

 

[sjastro]

Ahh .. you're just bein' 'one of those ol' fogies', (12:55 min mark), clingin' to yer ol' beliefs .. because the 'standard cosmology model is 100% outdated', (13:09 min mark) .. I mean between 'experiments in the lab' and 'JWST photographs confirming' what we believe about 99.99% plasma throughout the universe and the 'universe being electric' ..

I mean, what hope is left there for all us 'ol' fogies'??

An important clue can be gathered about the Dunderbolter's thought processes.
Around the 5.45 mark, Dunderbolter's will have time to marinate over the image in The Astrophysical Journal while the rest of us normal thinking individuals will ruminate over it.
This shows the suspicious nature of the Dunderbolters that everything in mainstream science is cooked up perhaps even marinated.

Incidentally as far as astrophysicists being clueless and having to make up the mechanism behind the image, here is the mainstream explanation from the 6.30 mark in the video.

One of the reasons JWST have made their raw image data available to the public is to give talented amateur astrophotograhpers such as Judy Schmidt the opportunity to process and extract maximum detail from the data as was done for this image.

Astrophysicists using the image and their own data were able to determine the mechanism.

 

[Halbhh]

I ran into this article yesterday while reading at random, and it gives a view about what is happening around the red quasar Sjastro posted an image on earlier.

Thought to be at least 3 merging galaxies pulled by each other and a supermassive black hole about 11.5 billion years back.
(click to expand)

Using the James Webb Space Telescope to look back in time at the early universe, astronomers discovered a surprise: a cluster of galaxies merging together around a rare red quasar within a massive black hole. The findings by Johns Hopkins University and an international team offer an unprecedented opportunity to observe how billions of years ago galaxies coalesced into the modern universe.
...
Although earlier observations of this area by NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the Near-Infrared Integral Field Spectrometer instrument on the Gemini-North telescope pinpointed the quasar and hinted at the possibility of a galaxy in transition, no one suspected that with Webb's crisp imaging they'd see multiple galaxies, at least three, swirling the region.

"With previous images we thought we saw hints that the galaxy was possibly interacting with other galaxies on the path to merger because their shapes get distorted in the process and we thought we maybe saw that," said co-principal investigator Nadia L. Zakamska ...

"But after we got the Webb data, I was like, 'I have no idea what we're even looking at here, what is all this stuff!' We spent several weeks just staring and staring at these images."

The Webb revealed at least three galaxies moving incredibly fast, suggesting a large amount of mass is present. The team believes this could be one of the densest known areas of galaxy formation in the early universe.

Because light takes time to travel to us, when we look at objects like this one in the very distant regions of the universe, we're seeing light that was emitted about 11.5 billion years ago, or from the earliest stages of the universe's evolution. Massive galaxy swarms like this one were likely common then, Zakamska said.

"It's super exciting to be one of the first people to see this really cool object," said Ishikawa, who contributed to the interpretation of the galaxy swarm.

The blindingly bright quasar, fueled by what Zakamska calls a "monster" black hole at the center of the galactic swirl, is a rare "extremely red" quasar, about 11.5 billion years old and one of the most powerful ever seen from such distance. It's essentially a black hole in formation, Vayner said, eating the gas around it and growing in mass. The clouds of dust and gas between Earth and the glowing gas near the black hole make the quasar appear red.

The team is already working on follow-up observations into this unexpected galaxy cluster, hoping to better understand how dense, chaotic galaxy clusters form, and how it is affected by supermassive black hole at its heart.

"... Every blob here is a baby galaxy merging into this mommy galaxy and the colors are different velocities and the whole thing is moving in an extremely complicated way. We can now start to untangle the motions."
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-webb-reveals-unprecedented-glimpse-merging.html

 

[Halbhh]

Now, seriously, that is just a lot of fun, merging galaxies moving at high velocities in different directions about a dramatic massive black hole red quasar
The emojis aren't quite any one alone just right, so,

 

[Hans Blaster]

An important clue can be gathered about the Dunderbolter's thought processes.
Around the 5.45 mark, Dunderbolter's will have time to marinate over the image in The Astrophysical Journal while the rest of us normal thinking individuals will ruminate over it.
This shows the suspicious nature of the Dunderbolters that everything in mainstream science is cooked up perhaps even marinated.

Hmm, Dunderbolters, OK. I still prefer Thuderdolts, but to each his own.

Incidentally as far as astrophysicists being clueless and having to make up the mechanism behind the image, here is the mainstream explanation from the 6.30 mark in the video.

It's odd you know... Why *did* they image WR140 with JWST? Could it be that it was a specific target? Why would that be?

Could it be that dust from W-R stars and their colliding winds have been a thing for decades and astronomers have known about the dust formation for a long time? Probably.

That's probably why WR 140 was specifically targeted for IR imaging on July 27. IR is a great place to find glowing dust.

https://www.stsci.edu/files/live/sites/www/files/home/jwst
/science-execution/observing-schedules/_documents
/2220703f02_report_20220726.txt

And then they wrote a paper about it posted earlier this month:

Nested Dust Shells around the Wolf-Rayet Binary WR 140 observed with JWST

There was a Nature paper (on previous Keck observations) last week on dust and molecules around WR140.

Radiation-driven acceleration in the expanding WR140 dust shell

​

Which is why Frasier Cain had those animations ready to explain the ring formation.

​

One of the reasons JWST have made their raw image data available to the public is to give talented amateur astrophotograhpers such as Judy Schmidt the opportunity to process and extract maximum detail from the data as was done for this image.

She is quite talented, but I am under the impression that the astronomers who obtained the JWST image were a little annoyed that her image gained traction before they had their full explanation ready to publish. (Publishing in the embargo-obsessed Nature is also part of the problem they bought upon themselves.) This allowed the hack pop-sci journalists to smother "unexplained" all over their articles. (You couldn't stop pseudoscience grifters like the TB crowd, though.)

 

[SelfSim]

An important clue can be gathered about the Dunderbolter's thought processes.
Around the 5.45 mark, Dunderbolter's will have time to marinate over the image in The Astrophysical Journal while the rest of us normal thinking individuals will ruminate over it.
This shows the suspicious nature of the Dunderbolters that everything in mainstream science is cooked up perhaps even marinated.

Incidentally as far as astrophysicists being clueless and having to make up the mechanism behind the image, here is the mainstream explanation from the 6.30 mark in the video.

Yes .. think this one appeared earlier in this thread .. Far simpler and way more credible explanation than some mysterious double layer forming for no reason .. (other than the opportunity to create bunch of scams).

One of the reasons JWST have made their raw image data available to the public is to give talented amateur astrophotograhpers such as Judy Schmidt the opportunity to process and extract maximum detail from the data as was done for this image.

Astrophysicists using the image and their own data were able to determine the mechanism.

What a nice clip/interview! No flashiness .. and no motivations other than just curiosity and the joy of exploration. Likeable person .. There's other amazing images she's produced there that have raised my interest (for what's that worth).

I mean, what, even, is that at 1:19mins????

 

[SelfSim]

.. (Publishing in the embargo-obsessed Nature is also part of the problem they bought upon themselves.)

Query: 'embargo-obsessed'?
What's the background there?

 

[SelfSim]

Which is why Frasier Cain ..

.. A man who's singularly responsible for over moderation, to the point of extinction, of certain inherited web forums .. I'm definitely not a fan of his, (FWIW) (.. But that's another story .. back to JWST).

 

[sjastro]

I mean, what, even, is that at 1:19mins????

The image is of the centre of our Milky Way galaxy taken by Spitzer in infrared and the radio part of the spectrum.

​

By comparison the galactic centre taken with a Pentax K-r using the visual part of the spectrum.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Query: 'embargo-obsessed'?
What's the background there?

In this case I specifically mean a press embargo, but the similar notion of a proprietary data period also applies and gets into conflict with the publication related embargo.

In many areas where news is generated at pre-announced events (government policy announcements, new product anouncements, legal notices, etc.) journalists who can be trusted are given "heads-up" with some preliminary information so they can prepare articles ahead of time if they agree to an embargo (withholding) of the publication until the announcement is made.

In science, this usually means that there should be no press until the paper is officially published. "Fancy" journals like Nature, like to hit the media with a blitz on publication day with articles in many publications so they use press embargos to allow science journalists to prepare articles for the release date. (If you ever see a phrase like "published today in the [science journal]" a press embargo was almost certainly involved.) Nature is notoriously tight about these things and not only prohibits authors from distributing preprints and university press releases, but has often prevented partial presentation in scientific talks at conferences, etc.

Working against the authors of the paper about WR140 rings is that their data was taken as part of the Early Release science program, so it has no proprietary period of the kind often used to allow the researchers who proposed an observation to analyze the data before it is available publicly (as all HST/JWST data is after a modest delay). So while they were writing their paper on the data and having it reviewed by Nature and put through the publication process anyone who knew the data archive system could download the raw observations and process it themselves. If they'd chosen a less restrictive journal (like the ApJ) they could have posted it to the arXiv on Aug 20 (when the submitted) or on Sept 21 (when it was accepted) like normal people.

 

[SelfSim]

In this case I specifically mean a press embargo, but the similar notion of a proprietary data period also applies and gets into conflict with the publication related embargo.

In many areas where news is generated at pre-announced events (government policy announcements, new product anouncements, legal notices, etc.) journalists who can be trusted are given "heads-up" with some preliminary information so they can prepare articles ahead of time if they agree to an embargo (withholding) of the publication until the announcement is made.

In science, this usually means that there should be no press until the paper is officially published. "Fancy" journals like Nature, like to hit the media with a blitz on publication day with articles in many publications so they use press embargos to allow science journalists to prepare articles for the release date. (If you ever see a phrase like "published today in the [science journal]" a press embargo was almost certainly involved.) Nature is notoriously tight about these things and not only prohibits authors from distributing preprints and university press releases, but has often prevented partial presentation in scientific talks at conferences, etc.

Working against the authors of the paper about WR140 rings is that their data was taken as part of the Early Release science program, so it has no proprietary period of the kind often used to allow the researchers who proposed an observation to analyze the data before it is available publicly (as all HST/JWST data is after a modest delay). So while they were writing their paper on the data and having it reviewed by Nature and put through the publication process anyone who knew the data archive system could download the raw observations and process it themselves. If they'd chosen a less restrictive journal (like the ApJ) they could have posted it to the arXiv on Aug 20 (when the submitted) or on Sept 21 (when it was accepted) like normal people.

Hmm .. thanks for that! Interesting .. A 'reveal' on the commercial aspects of science (including Astronomy).
Cheers

 

[sjastro]

She is quite talented, but I am under the impression that the astronomers who obtained the JWST image were a little annoyed that her image gained traction before they had their full explanation ready to publish. (Publishing in the embargo-obsessed Nature is also part of the problem they bought upon themselves.) This allowed the hack pop-sci journalists to smother "unexplained" all over their articles. (You couldn't stop pseudoscience grifters like the TB crowd, though.)​

This probably represents a disconnect between NASA's citizen science of which Judy Schmidt is a participant and the press embargo procedures employed by journals such as Nature.
NASA are under no obligations for Nature's press embargos and use Judy Schmidt's images as a public relations exercise.

LIGO were also into press embargos.
In 2017 I sent an E-mail to Christopher Berry from LIGO about rumors circulating on the Internet about a major gravitational wave discovery (this was not the first discovery in 2016).

New LIGO. Source with optical counterpart. Blow your sox off!"

The cat was out of the bag when the investigative journalists found that major observatories around the planet had torn up their observing schedules and were concentrating on the galaxy NGC 4993.
Christopher Berry did not reply until the formal announcement of GW170817 a gravitational wave with an optical component emanating from the galaxy NGC 4993.
Scientists were subject to a press blackout but not all conformed such as Messrs. Wheeler and Co and LIGO's special day of announcing the discovery was very much diluted.

 

[Hans Blaster]

This probably represents a disconnect between NASA's citizen science of which Judy Schmidt is a participant and the press embargo procedures employed by journals such as Nature.
NASA are under no obligations for Nature's press embargos and use Judy Schmidt's images as a public relations exercise.

Absolutely. She had no obligation to comply with the whims of the Nature Publishing Group Ltd. She had every right to download and work with the data. (As would any of us.)

Protip: If your data is publicly available to anyone with an internet connection, perhaps using a journal with tight press embargo requirements isn't such a good idea.

LIGO were also into press embargos.
In 2017 I sent an E-mail to Christopher Berry from LIGO about rumors circulating on the Internet about a major gravitational wave discovery (this was not the first discovery in 2016).

The cat was out of the bag when the investigative journalists found that major observatories around the planet had torn up their observing schedules and were concentrating on the galaxy NGC 4993.
Christopher Berry did not reply until the formal announcement of GW170817 a gravitational wave with an optical component emanating from the galaxy NGC 4993.
Scientists were subject to a press blackout but not all conformed such as Messrs. Wheeler and Co and LIGO's special day of announcing the discovery was very much diluted.

Oh, I forgot about that. Back then the LIGO triggers were private to the LIGO science team and the 1000 or so astronomers inside the embargo who were doing those observations. Sometimes "big secrets" leave a notable footprint. (The GRB trigger was publicly available, so the massive concentration on a single, short GRB was kind of a give away.)

 

[Halbhh]

There are several exceptional new observations and explanations in astronomy lately, the kind that would in the past stand out to me as likely to be the best of the year, or close, but I've seen 3 in the last week on that level.

Wolf-Rayet stars are a very late stage it's thought of very massive stars that have blown off the remainder of their hydrogen, and are burning rapidly through helium and more advanced fusion products toward the inevitable end that happens once there is a large enough iron core. Not too long! You could think of them like a teenage dare devil drug addict that's had a few beers and has a death wish and is going all out pedal to the metal without looking, lol, it's a wild ride...they won't make it much longer down that road.

The Hottest Stars In The Universe Are All Missing One Key Ingredient

It'd going to become a black hole or maybe a type 1b or 1c supernova.

So, next post is the cool perfect spiral ring thing we saw recently now explained.

 

[Halbhh]

The image from the James Webb Space Telescope (left) confirmed in detail the predictions of the model (right).
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-alien-megastructures-cosmic-thumbprint-james.html

Catching that for the first time on camera was something new. In each orbit, it is as if the star unfurls a giant sail made of dust. When it catches the intense radiation streaming from the star, like a yacht catching a gust, the dusty sail makes a sudden leap forward.

Smoke rings in space

The final outcome of all this physics is arrestingly beautiful. Like a clockwork toy, WR140 puffs out precisely sculpted smoke rings with every eight-year orbit.

Each ring is engraved with all this wonderful physics written in the detail of its form. All we have to do is wait and the expanding wind inflates the dust shell like a balloon until it is big enough for our telescopes to image.

Then, eight years later, the binary returns in its orbit and another shell appears identical to the one before, growing inside the bubble of its predecessor. Shells keep accumulating like a ghostly set of giant nesting dolls.
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-alien-megastructures-cosmic-thumbprint-james.html

 

[Halbhh]

Another interesting bit on the 8 year binary system WR140 with the Wolf Rayet described just above is to see the relative size of the stars compared to our own sun:

https://phys.org/news/2022-10-plumes-interstellar-space-intense-starlight.html#lightbox


The Wolf Rayet has a smaller diameter having blown off its hydrogen.

 

[essentialsaltes]

 

[Gene2memE]

Hmm .. thanks for that! Interesting .. A 'reveal' on the commercial aspects of science (including Astronomy).
Cheers

It's really common.

Even I, a lowly editor in a specialty media firm, get early access to various scientific journal articles to see if we're interested in publishing about them.

The fun stuff comes when there's a retraction or a mistake. I've gotten frantic calls at all sorts of hours asking me to put a correction into a piece, or nix something entirely from our website.