10,004 karma · joined April 12, 2011
The Cycle 1 documentation, including the now-expired Call for Proposals is here: https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-opportunities-and-policies
If you mean the APT (Astronomer's Proposal Tool) this tool was originally developed for Hubble Space Telescope proposals, and has been in use since at least least 2008[0]. A year or two ago, I found that parts of it are written in Common Lisp[1].
[0] https://www.stsci.edu/scientific-community/software/astronom...
[1] https://apst.stsci.edu/apt/documents/documentation/apt-proje...
Space-based very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) has been done at lower frequencies, most recently with the RadioAstron satellite[0]. There hasn't yet been a VLBI satellite observing at the same frequencies that the EHT uses, but there are mission concepts being discussed. [1] discusses some of the technical challenges.
[0] https://pampadirect.com/tostador-enlozado-enameled-kitchen-g...
fast power up
energy efficiency
But both of those are radio telescopes, so a more fair comparison with JWST would be the sizes of optical/near-infrared/mid-infrared telescopes. The Gran Telescopio Canarias has an 10.4m diameter primary that is made of a number of smaller mirrors. Keck's design is the similar (and came before the GTC), though the primary diameter is slightly smaller at 10m. The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) has two 8.4m diameter mirrors. All three of these telescopes are capable of observing in the mid-infrared; in principle with higher angular resolution but less stable point spread functions and reduced sensitivity compared to JWST.
The Vera Rubin Observatory mirror is about the same diameter as the LBT's mirrors, but the large secondary and tertiary mirrors reduce the collecting area to be equivalent to that of a ~6.7m mirror.
In general, these types of flagship facilities (JWST, Hubble, etc.) are funded by the government (via NASA in the US). In some cases, larger ground-based observatories (e.g., Keck, Large Binocular Telescope) are funded by a combination of private consortia (consisting of foundations and public/private universities) and competitively awarded scientific grants (e.g., from the National Science Foundation, in the US).
The operations are generally paid for by the above sources. Researchers apply for time through a competitive proposal process where ideas for using the facility are collected and evaluated, with proposals awarded telescope time based on scientific merit and technical feasibility. Sometimes, particularly for investigators located in the US working with space telescope data, funding is awarded to the investigating team along with the telescope time. This funding is used to support the analysis of the collected data (e.g., to hire faculty/postdoctoral researchers/students, purchase computers, etc.). For ground-based facilities, researchers often apply for funding from the National Science Foundation to support the analysis of their data.
That's a blast from the past! I remember getting a CueCat in the mail (I guess in 2000, based on the timeline in the Wikipedia article[0]). Neat to see that they've found another life (many others, by the sounds of it).
Most astronomical images (even those taken in the optical) are not as a human eye would see/perceive the scene. They're almost always made in a way to highlight features of scientific interest, look aesthetic, or both. And in the case of images outside the visual spectrum, they are assigned representative colors.
Another angle is that astronomical images are generally intensity images, taken through a single filter, rather than inherently color images. Several of these images, taken through different filters, can be combined to make a color image. However, even if taken in the visual portion of the spectrum, the responses of the filters generally won't match the human eye's responses, so the images aren't what the human eye would see.
For example, the Spitzer Space Telescope (covering 3.6-160 microns), captured images of astrophysical objects and these images were used to generate representative images:
- Helix nebula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Comets_Kick_up_Dust_in_He...
- Cepheus B and C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PIA23126-CepheusC%26Bregi...
JWST operates largely in the infrared (though it has some overlap with the visual range), but will undoubtedly capture wonderful images in the infrared and these images will be combined to make stunning pseudo-color images.
[0] https://canadagps.ca/collections/gps-data-logger/products/co...
Phytoplankton rely on photosynthesis and are the food for a large fraction of marine life (either directly or indirectly).
There's a charge comparison table[0]. Prices are going up, but they'll be lower than the previous AAS Journals Open Access premium. Their sample paper prices are $60-225 per page (because AAS journals have "quanta" charges, where a quanta is a set number of words, a figure, etc.).
It may save you from head trauma as a result of a car hitting you, either from your head hitting the pavement or the car.
For what it's worth, this kind of behavior isn't limited to theory papers. Papers presenting analysis and model development also generally only show the "finished" result, omitting most or all of the bad models, training models, development models, etc. that were used to get to the final result. Same thing with observational papers in astronomy and related fields. There's a lot of work done that builds the authors' confidence in the correctness of the result, but that doesn't lend itself to a clean "story" for the paper or perhaps also ends up being supportive but not necessary to demonstrate a result.
I remember being surprised as a student, to learn that papers aren't narrations of the path to a discovery, but rather a narrative to describe the idea in a compelling (and hopefully clear) fashion.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/302027/why-work-suc...
It wasn't technical aspects of VMs per se, it was how to use them while still keeping things separate. If I had my personal machine as a VM on work baremetal, then in principle the personal VM wouldn't really be isolatable from work because if they had a keylogger then it would capture all input.
Edit: To be clear, I don't think that my employer uses keyloggers. But if the purpose was to keep personal and work separate, I didn't think a personal VM on a work machine really provided enough separation.
I didn't carefully investigate the reverse (having my work machine be a VM on top of a personal laptop) partly because MacOS is easiest for a work machine and I didn't want to mess around with trying to run MacOS in a VM.
> This sounds extremely trusting towards your employer, and puts you at a lot of risk depending on their policies and philosophy.
That's exactly why I didn't go down that route.
In all fairness, I suspect me buying 2 laptops every 3-4 years instead of one laptop over the same period is a small environmental impact compared to other things (air travel, dietary choices). But it also seems like that's not a reason for me to ignore its impact. And the aggregate cost of many people having 2 laptops instead of 1 is probably worth considering.
I thought about ways to only have one device (running my personal "machine" as a VM on my work laptop or vice versa) but couldn't come up with anything cleanly satisfactory.
That depends on what your goal is. If your aim is to learn the programming language, code up that program/task/tool even if someone else has already done it.
Maybe AP (and news outlets in general) should make a further commitment to write a "concluding" story about any crimes where they do publish a name, so that there's a news record of the outcome with respect to conviction/acquittal.
I've since resorted to more hand-checking of references when I'm publishing a paper. Rreference management is tedious, but I've found that it is overall is a minor fraction of the time spent working on a paper. So it doesn't seem worth spending too much effort automating.
[0] https://github.com/privong/PaperTools/blob/main/bib_update.p...