James Webb Space Telescope White House Briefing | Hacker News Reader

James Webb Space Telescope White House Briefing

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88 pointsjotamon91 comments

The image is published now:

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-... ("NASA’s Webb Delivers Deepest Infrared Image of Universe Yet")

late edit: And now full-resolution versions have been published (largest is 4537 x 4630):

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/038/01G...

Is the light bending around some gravitational point, or is that an* artifact of the telescope itself?

If the former, that is astounding.

Edit: nvm I think I figured it out myself. There are objects next to smeared galaxies that are not distorted. The distorted objects must be behind the gravitational field, and the un-distorted objects in front.

They said the bending isn't an artifact of the telescope.

Seems to be multiple objects creating gravitational lensing. I assume that is what's causing the weird smudged galaxy.

From the article: > The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it.

It looks like there are undistorted galaxies right next to the distorted ones, overlapping even. That suggests it’s not just a telescope artifact.

It is a gravitational lens. A massive concentration of matter in between us and the galaxies behind it that bends the light and give us an extra magnification factor. Strange to look at, they can also boost the light gathering ability of the telescope and give us valuable information about the very early universe.

You can compare with the pre-JWST images here: https://archive.stsci.edu/prepds/relics/color_images/smacs07...

Link doesn't seem to be working for me sadly

Direct image links:

https://archive.stsci.edu/missions/hlsp/relics/smacs0723-73/...

Is each of those spirals really the size of our whole galaxy? And if we were to zoom in 100x more, would there be just as many galaxies to see, or is there a perceivable outer edge to our universe's expansion?

That and more. Currently we think there are 2 trillion of those little dots in the observable universe. There have been some very interesting whole sky surveys that have mapped many of them. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has data on location, distance and spectroscopy on 50 million of the little buggers. They have some neat 3D maps, think milk being stirred into the black coffee of the vast.

I read the count of "observed" galaxies is 170 billion, i.e. extrapolating the deep field count. Certain assumptions about faint and redshifted galaxies increases that number to about trillion.

Early galaxies may not look as regular and spirally as recent galaxies. JWST will see more detail in the early universe to better quantify this.

Yes, if we were to take our best image ever, the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field and multiply it by the whole sky, we would likely see 176 billion galaxies using that same telescope and exposure. That could be considered a lower limit. But we also have models of mass and galaxy formation that suggest the number of galaxies within the observable universe is many times larger, maybe up to 2 trillion. Hubble cannot see everything at every wavelength, even if we have unobstructed line of sight to it.

And to answer the questions you edited in, yes, there is an edge to the universe. It is the literal edge of time, the moment when everything was one and infinite (a singularity, we think). This edge is 13.8 billion light years in every direction. As we look far away and back in time, we can see the whole history of everything, from just after the universe cooled and expanded enough to be transparent to light, to the first protogalaxies and all the development of everything up until our very noses.

Thank you for the answers. It's all amazing to think about. It seemed strange to me when reading your comment, for example, that the universe would look the same age in every direction. Why? Are we close to the center? And then it hit me (probably not for the first or last time): we can only see as far as light had time to travel here! In reality the universe just keeps going.

Possibly. The data is consistent with an infinite universe, that expanded, and so we can only see a finite portion of it (back to the CMB). It's also consistent with a finite universe, that expanded, and so we can only see a small portion of it...

Yup, we are at the center because we are the observer. Presumably everyone anywhere would appear to be at the center, just as you appear to be the center of your world and I appear to be the center of mine.

Looking this far into the past is partially about zooming in, and another part about the wavelength of the light. JWST being in infrared means that it can see things further away which have been redshifted so far that they are no longer visible to the human eye. As you look farther and farther, objects actually appear bigger, because the universe was smaller and the objects were closer at the time the light from them was emitted. At the end of it is the Cosmic Microwave Background, which is the first light that was able to travel when the universe became transparent enough that photons weren't immediately reabsorbed.

Angular Diameter Turnaround: https://xkcd.com/2622/.

> This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

> The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it

The vastness of it all is mind numbing, it gives me mixed feelings of awe, humility, and dread.

Same image, but from Hubble -

https://relics.stsci.edu/data/smacs0723-73/MAST/color_images...

(Found here https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/vwsswt/megathread_pr...)

Gosh, what a crappy news conference. 40 minutes late, about 5 minutes long, and they didn't even show the released image full-screen at any point.

NASA used to do these on their own with no politicians there. Much better IMO.

Webb was hugely expensive, so I understand why they had Biden and Harris there, but if their time was very limited, they should have exited and brought up some scientists to further describe the image, and answer press questions. Imagine how the press pool felt going through all the hassle of a Whitehouse visit for that.

Maybe the one scheduled for tomorrow will be better.

https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive

It will be. Not sure why they ingratiated themselves to the White House 24 hours early

For those expressing disappointment, keep in mind that this probably reminds you of the Hubble deep field, but that image took 11 cumulative days of exposures and tons of post processing. This is a very impressive deep field right out of the gate based on only 11 hours of exposure. I don’t know any more details than that.

It’s going to take lots of context and details to be able to make apples to apples comparisons on image quality. Consider how hard it is to come up with a “WOW” image after decades of Hubble and highly advanced image processing techniques from space and terrestrial scopes. It’ll take many years to get the full value from JWST, and this is just the start.

So bravo and keep it coming!

Not a single comment in this thread has expressed disappointment about the image itself. People are disappointed about the PR and poorly run press conference.

It's disappointing because community outreached/education is supposed to be a part of NASAs job. It was late, filled with cliches, bad image quality, and over far too quickly. A squandered opportunity to pay-off the excitement for this project to communicate why it's interesting and build excitement for what's still to come.

I guess we'll have to stick to Youtube channels with proper production and presentation skills to do that...

Joke's on us, NASA paid a lot of money for this music loop and they're gonna get their money's worth

Every time it reaches the end, I feel like it's one of those cruel "phone ring" sounds companies do to make you think someone is answering the phone while you're on hold.

Your science interest is important to us...

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=C8CHkd0gX0I&list=RDAMVMC8C...

There are so many better options for space music, this is nearly 30 years old https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6rtzPp0_ew

Yes, but see NASA is trying to tell us something. The nerds thought they would be on the ones pushing space exploration forward. And they were, for a time. But then the travel vloggers, the instagrammers, the reality tv producers, and even the pornographers all saw the advertising money floating out there in the cosmos, and space has been tropical house ever since.

Hard to see details of the image on the stream. You can see the image here: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/ma...

PNG or TIFF anywhere?

https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G7JJ29QMHNZKDK9JC7M4G47T.tif

You can compare with the pre-JWST images here: https://archive.stsci.edu/prepds/relics/color_images/smacs07...

Noticeably better detail, for sure.

Wonder can you draw lines/connect things to form volumetric depth information not sure if that makes sense. Otherwise I'm just looking at pretty dots (don't have the context). Crazy though size/how many. Sad, need FTL/warp.

“If you hold one grain of sand at arms length”.. it would be about as big as this image they’re showing onscreen.

I don’t love this picture-in-picture-in-picture-in-picture effect.

… in glorious 720p /s

grain of sand is what like 100um, arm is about a meter so tan-1 0.0001/1 ~ 0.0001 (lim x->0 tan x = x). 360 deg, 60 min in a degree so that's about 2 arc min. Does that make sense?

I had expected something better than the bulk of pictures from Hubble. It honestly just looks like a picture captured by Hubble.

Edit: clearly, I was wrong

The scale is much, much different. This is a fraction of the space Hubble photographed. This is a tiny bit of space shown with the clarity that Hubble had for areas far bigger

Thanks for the explanation. I was clearly wrong! Honestly, not sure what "better" I had expected.

I wouldn't say you're wrong. It does look very similar to a Hubble deep field image because there isn't much of a difference visually between the different scales.

That's kind of the definition of fractal. You look at 1/100 the area, but at 100 times the magnification, and it looks the same.

The universe isn't infinite, so this wouldn't scale forever, but we probably have a ways to go before we need to worry about that.

I felt it missed a "before/after" comparison

I feel the same way. This picture looks very similar to images we have already seen. It would have been nice if they showed off the IR capture.

Why would it look any different? It's a deep field image. There's nothing to see except galaxies.

Also, this is the IR capture. The telescope can't see anything else.

Here's Hubble views of the same object:

https://archive.stsci.edu/prepds/relics/color_images/smacs07...

Here's miscellaneous other views (since the JWST deep field is 2.4' wide, I beleve that this map link encloses that image, barely):

https://aladin.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?target=07%2023%2011.04...

Let’s goooooo

So excited to finally see some big tech payoff in my lifetime. Our parents had the shuttles, we get the telescope!

The current generation also had CERN which gave us confirmation of Higgs and LIGO which confirmed Gravity Waves, two of the biggest discoveries of the century.

tbqh confirmations aren't exciting unless you're in that scientific field. Most people just hear 'we spent $10 billion and found that our predictions about something too small to detect any other way were correct.' Sure there are downstream benefits in everything from heavy engineering to database design, but that's too abstract for most people.

That's why people make up conspiracy theories instead about how the LHC is pulling the earth into a different timeline and changing the facts of the past. It's paranoid nonsense but it's interesting seems like the sort of exciting outcome you should get in return for $10b. I kinda think CERN should lean into it, sponsor Half Life 3 or something.

When I was growing up, fairly young still (13), the shuttle blew up shortly after liftoff. It set the whole program back by many years, crushing many of my dreams for rapid expansion into space (it was also fairly traumatizing to watch the repeated coverage). To be honest, except for a few great wins and unique missions, I don't think the shuttle was truly a big tech payoff.

The ASL interpreter is just delightful.

Never seen an interpreter so animated. Way more interesting than listening to the dialog so far.

Been watching NASA TV for the last hour (got on early before the first delay). It would be nice to have some update of when it's actually going to happen.

You expect the government to treat you like a customer?

Well that was underwhelming

Link to the released image

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/ma...

Everyone should zoom into this image on your own because it is just absolutely amazing! I don’t care politically either way, but I’m sure/hopeful NASA’s presentation tomorrow will actually do a better job of showing just how important these visual discoveries really are.

Official Source:

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/#public

Running late currently

The White House stream is 1080p vs 720p for the NASA stream.

The pictures will show up here though: https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages

Yep, the first image just dropped: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-...

It's like the Hubble Deep Field only with a lot of obvious gravitational lensing.

The context makes the picture more amazing than what Hubble did.

> Webb’s image covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground – and reveals thousands of galaxies in a tiny sliver of vast universe

Related ongoing thread:

Deepest infrared image of universe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32062849 - July 2022 (61 comments)

I thought we weren't getting first look until tomorrow. This rules.

What time will it start?

It was supposed to start at 5:30 ET.

To celebrate the decade long delay of Webb itself, the start time has been indefinitely delayed from 5:00 pm.

> We will begin shortly...

Lies.

NASA timescales are in the billions of years.

What's the least-effort, code-golf way to set up a push notification for the moment the event *actually* starts? This hold music is going to [omitted for politeness].

A Twitter search for "Webb starting"?

We need an automated solution so a bot can Tweet that. Otherwise some noble soul has to wait and watch to tell everyone else, who will then have to contribute to their patreon/soundcloud.

Just started! hopefully that's no-code enough for ya :)

It was changed to 5:30 ET and is now running late it seems...

It took many years for the light to reach the telescope, what’s a few more minutes?

Hey, I'm not living on cosmic time here! =)

theories...

An intern photoshopped a middle finger into the Pillars of creation and they're busy removing it.

The aliens filed a CCPA request to obscure their presence.

Clearing MAGA supporters wearing tinfoil hats who raided the conference room.

Not to sound maga-ish, but its probably biden's fault. I assume he is a little busy.

On-brand for the JWST, to be fair.

Just started!

Just started

6:15 PM EST

It is starting now!

Now, let's listen to politicians talk for 45 minutes. The hold music was better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com