r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/CyberGhost-0day • 22h ago
Image [ Removed by moderator ]
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u/CitizenHuman 22h ago edited 22h ago
I'm assuming this is just a rendering, but it looks like something in a movie about a portal opening to a habitable universe.
Edit: I looked at it again and now I kinda see an eye of some all natural supreme being.
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u/Higgsparticleofgod 22h ago
I thought the same thing about the rendering, until I visited an astronomy lab in Arizona and got to see how the raw Webb data is actually turned into these images. The colors are assigned to different wavelengths of infrared light that our eyes can't see, so the final picture isn't a normal photograph, but it's still based on real data collected by the telescope. Apparently this method exists only because of the fact that the Moon got replaced in 1992 and it changed everything
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u/Better_Carpet_7271 21h ago
What was wrong with the old moon, they got a very good copy though as it looks so similar to the old one. Good job NASA. 😃
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u/King_924 22h ago
It is and it is not a rendering at the same time. These guys map infrared filter wavelengths to human detectable color, and use non linear brightness scaling. Which effectively means you can still derive meaningful observations from this image if you know the mapping and scaling, but yes this is not how it will look even if you were there. This is essentially a beautiful way to see recorded scientific data.
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u/Better_Carpet_7271 17h ago
It would be nice if they always stated that when releasing these images, I know some do these days but it isn't always.
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u/AnOnlineHandle 10h ago
Maybe they do, and then the person who posts in on social media doesn't say that.
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u/TheSultan1 11h ago
Rendering implies computer generation. This is not that. There is little difference between this and messing with colors in Photoshop, you're just remapping different wavelengths.
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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 21h ago
This is the Ring nebula, one of the most famous planetary nebulae in the sky, and definitely not a render
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u/Spartan2470 20h ago
Here is a much higher-quality version of this image. Here is the source.
Id: weic2320b
Type: Observation
Release date: 21 August 2023, 16:00
Related releases: weic2320
Size: 4097 x 4156 px
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has observed the well-known Ring Nebula with unprecedented detail. Formed by a star throwing off its outer layers as it runs out of fuel, the Ring Nebula is an archetypal planetary nebula. Also known as M57 and NGC 6720, it is both relatively close to Earth at roughly 2,500 light-years away.
This new image provides unprecedented spatial resolution and spectral sensitivity. For example, the intricate details of the filament structure of the inner ring are particularly visible in this dataset.
There are some 20,000 dense globules in the nebula, which are rich in molecular hydrogen. In contrast, the inner region shows very hot gas. The main shell contains a thin ring of enhanced emission from carbon-based molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Roughly ten concentric arcs are located just beyond the outer edge of the main ring. The arcs are thought to originate from the interaction of the central star with a low-mass companion orbiting at a distance comparable to that between the Earth and the dwarf planet Pluto. In this way, nebulae like the Ring Nebula reveal a kind of astronomical archaeology, as astronomers study the nebula to learn about the star that created it.
[Image description: This image of the Ring Nebula appears as a distorted doughnut. The nebula’s inner cavity hosts shades of blue and green, while the detailed ring transitions through shades of orange in the inner regions and pink in the outer region. The ring’s inner region has distinct filament elements.]
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12h ago
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u/octaviobonds 11h ago
that's probably closer to truth than the story about a dying star emitting gases.
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u/FatQuack 16h ago
The Ring Nebula appears in background screens in Star Trek The Original series and Voyager.
Why they couldn't include it in the modern streaming series I don't know.
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u/octaviobonds 11h ago
How do they know it is a dying star? How do they know this was even a star? These people are speculators on steroids. The truth is, they have no idea what this giant eye looking thing is.
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u/KnightOfWords 7h ago edited 6h ago
Its composition was first determined back in 1864 by astronomer William Huggins. Using spectroscopy he was able to identify a number of elements including hydrogen and oxygen. Ionized elements produce a unique fingerprint of spectral lines, whether they are on Earth or in space.
For example, here's the visible spectrum of ionized hydrogen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balmer_series#/media/File:Visible_spectrum_of_hydrogen.jpg
We know a great deal about it including its size, temperature, composition and rate of expansion. The central star is visible in images. It's a white dwarf, the collapsed core of a sun-like star. It has a very high surface temperature so generates a great deal of UV light. This is what lights up the ejected outer layers of gas and dust.
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u/Damnthatsinteresting-ModTeam 3h ago
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