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SCIENCE!!!: James Webb Edition (Off-Topic)

by INSANEdrive, ಥ_ಥ | f(ಠ‿↼)z | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Monday, July 11, 2022, 18:47 (884 days ago)
edited by INSANEdrive, Monday, July 11, 2022, 18:50

The First Images from the James Webb Space Telescope were revealed today. And I can't help myself but feel ecstatically excited. But some of us who haven't delved into the beautiful madness that is science (in this case astronomy) might not understand the sheer significance of this beautiful beautiful image. And, out of sheer ANGST that I have really no one (anymore :() in my fam to geek out about this shit... I'm THROWING IT ON THE WALL HERE! SMEARING IT ALL OVER - YEAH! This post is THE FINGER PAINT OF SCIENCE! Science! Science!

As stated in the link above, the image provided today is of galaxy cluster "SMACS 0723". Probably doesn't mean a thing to most, might as well Alpha-D-Beta NumberDeNumberDe. And that's fine, but we're gonna get back to exactly why that spot with the fantastically remember-able name in a moment.

[image]

So... real quick. Alot of comments around the net are meme'n off with "My god, it's full of stars". And I get it, but it's also making pale what this really is. Those aren't stars, those are GALAXIES! Each one of those glistening hypno-toads of dew-drop magic are a ballpark of 100,000 STARS! Red suckers are moving AWAY from the camera (WEBB), Blue moving towards.

BUT IT GETS EVEN BETTER!

Due to the nature of... heh ...!!SCALE!! that is the universe, all pictures of space are in some way an extreme sort of time snapshot. And this snapshot is the universe when it was only A FEW MILLION YEARS OLD! WE ARE LOOKING BACK IN TIME!! 13 BILLION LIGHT YEARS AWAY!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHitssocoolomg.

Ok, so... scale and coolness aside (and I didn't even MENTION Gravitational lensing), what's the big deal about SMACS 0723? Well... Hubble also took a picture of this spot back in the day, so now we can compare what Hubble could do then against the new HOTNESS that is now with WEBB.

[image]

Yeah? YEAH! LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE! If you'd like to see it animated flipped back and forth, here's a tweet with a ".gif" that shows it off just so. (You'll have to click the link in the tweet for this one.)

So what's next? Well, for that I'll drop a quick tweet storm by someone who has already outlined what next far better then I need to. Pictures are pretty cool here too, so might be best to just jump into it there since the images don't embed into thumbnails here.


SCIENCE!!!!!!

~ ~ ~

“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.”

― Edgar Mitchell

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