Space In General

tarnheld

With just 4 days until the first scientific images from the James Webb Space Telescope here is a teaser from the guidance camera of the telescope. Remember that this camera is only used to steer the telescope during imaging, there is already impressive detail in this picture. More details here.
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I can’t wait to see what this telescope can do, if the engineers are saying this is just a calibration image.

What’s astounding is most of those objects are not stars but separate galaxies. Really puts what we are and our place in the cosmos into perspective.
 
From today's edition of Spaceweather.com:

THE STARFISH PRIME GEOMAGNETIC STORM: Sixty years ago today, one of the biggest geomagnetic storms of the Space Age struck Earth. It didn't come from the sun.

"We made it ourselves," recalls Clive Dyer of the University of Surrey Space Centre in Guildford UK. "It was the first anthropogenic space weather event."

On July 9, 1962, the US military detonated a thermonuclear warhead 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean--a test called "Starfish Prime." What happened next surprised everyone. Witnesses from Hawaii to New Zealand reported auroras overhead, magnificent midnight "rainbow stripes" that tropical sky watchers had never seen before. Radios fell silent, then suddenly became noisy as streetlights went dark in Honolulu.


'Nuclear auroras' viewed from Honolulu (left) and a surveillance aircraft (right) on July 9, 1962.​

Essentially, Starfish Prime created an artificial solar storm complete with auroras, geomagnetic activity, and blackouts. Much of the chaos that night was caused by the electromagnetic pulse (EMP)--a ferocious burst of radiation that ionized the upper atmosphere. Ionized air over the Pacific pinned down Earth's magnetic field, then let it go again when the ionization subsided. The rebound created a manmade geomagnetic storm for hundreds of miles around the blast zone.

"The explosion led to the early demise of all the spacecraft in orbit at the time," says Dyer. "These included Ariel-1, the UK's first spacecraft, and Telstar-1, a US communications satellite which had the bad luck to be launched the very next day."

Normally, geomagnetic storms bring down satellites via orbital decay. The upper atmosphere heats up and expands to the point where it can pull satellites down toward Earth. Starfish Prime was different.

"The explosion filled Earth's magnetosphere with energetic electrons, adding them to our planet's natural radiation belts," explains Dyer. These artificial electrons hit satellites hard, degrading their electronics and solar arrays.


Credit: R.E. Fischell, “ANNA-1B Solar Cell Damage Experiment,” Transcript of the Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, April 10, 1963, Washington DC.​

"Ariel-1 became almost unusable after only 4 days due to power degradation and tape recorder failure," recalls Dyer. "The Telstar satellite lasted until November 1962 when its command decoder failed. It still managed to provide the first transatlantic TV feed, synchronize UK/US time to 1 microsecond and inspired the Tornado's rock classic 'Telstar,' which used recordings of a flushing toilet played backwards."

The flux of energetic electrons trapped in Earth's magnetosphere remained high for years, hammering satellites deep into the 1960s.

Dyer, who is widely known for his studies of extreme space weather, was still in school when the explosion occured. It set the stage for his entire career. "Starfish Prime," he says, "was a defining event."

 
R1600Turbo
Here's the live stream for today's Starlink launch. I will be on site for this one, so expect video later. 👍

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Update: don't expect any video, we saw absolutely nothing. Vandenberg fog didn't cooperate yet again... 😔

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www.nasa.gov

NASA’s Webb Delivers Deepest Infrared Image of Universe Yet - NASA

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail.
www.nasa.gov www.nasa.gov

The first image from the James Webb Space Telescope

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ProjectWHaT
www.nasa.gov

NASA’s Webb Delivers Deepest Infrared Image of Universe Yet - NASA

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail.
www.nasa.gov www.nasa.gov

The first image from the James Webb Space Telescope

main_image_deep_field_smacs0723-5mb.jpg
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webb.JPG



The clarity here is incredible. The Hubble deep field images are also obviously amazing, but they are nowhere near this sharp. Here is the Hubble Deep field for comparison:

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Beautiful first Webb deep field image, with more to come today. :dopey:

This took Webb 12.5 hours of exposure, with the Hubble deep field image taking a few weeks of exposure.
 
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Are those actual photos or have they been colorized? I know some space images go through a process where color is applied to them, but that might've just been images from 20-30 years ago. I'm not really sure. Either way, they're still incredible.
 
Joey D
Are those actual photos or have they been colorized? I know some space images go through a process where color is applied to them, but that might've just been images from 20-30 years ago. I'm not really sure. Either way, they're still incredible.
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The search preview of this paywalled article says that the JWST photographs are black and white.

www.newscientist.com

How the James Webb Space Telescope's first colour images were made

Joseph DePasquale, the lead image processor for the James Webb Space Telescope, says seeing its first colour picture was an "overwhelming" experience
www.newscientist.com www.newscientist.com
 
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Joey D
Are those actual photos or have they been colorized? I know some space images go through a process where color is applied to them, but that might've just been images from 20-30 years ago. I'm not really sure. Either way, they're still incredible.
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Well... it depends on what you mean by "colourised". And, for that matter, "colour".

Satisfactorily human coloured images are only possible with instruments that record visible light. Webb doesn't do that, as it only carries near- and mid-infrared imaging sensors.

That means from reddish-orange (600nm) and out is "true" colour, but most of what it captures is simply not visible to our eyes (visible light runs out at about 700nm, while Webb runs to wavelengths almost a full order magnitude larger, at 5um). Anything from reddish-orange and in - that's all but RO of ROYGBIV - is "corrected" into visible light equivalents based on a calibration from captures of known objects previously imaged with visible light.

And of course everything is redshifted (the more redshifted the further out it gets - which is partly why IR imaging can get much further out (and therefore back in time), and that's also corrected.
 
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