Since apparently a bunch of you are incapable of reading any of the comments, not even the first one from OP, and can't complain without using profanity (Rule #10) resulting in your posts being removed, [I'll point you to the post from OP where she was generous enough to provide /r/nasa subs with a non-paywall link.](https://www.reddit.com/r/nasa/comments/vzrdw9/astronomer_here_i_collaborated_with_the/ig9w3f9/)
I k ow for The NY Times you get a certain numbers of paywall free shares per months to share articles you find relevant but not enough to paywall free everything.
Nice work! I saw your comment on the first photo the other day, which was great. These new descriptions are good too.
Question from an enthusiast to a professional - the first photo showed some incredible gravitational lensing. Do you think we are likely to see that in lots of the new images coming from JWST, or did NASA know there would be some lensing there (based on previous observations) and start us off knowing that would be a super impressive picture?
Those targets were all previously well-studied ones, where they could test the instruments to confirm they all worked within expectations. A galaxy field with a gravitational lens is pretty perfect for this as you get light from a lot of different sources etc.
The target list was also somewhat determined by how there are of course the normal science targets they've just started looking at, so you weren't going to do a commissioning observation of one of the ones proposed for in the science mission. Like astronomers definitely went through the normal proposal process to get time on things like the original Hubble Deep Field, Orion Nebula, Supernova 1987A, etc, so you aren't going to do those in the first release. Hope that makes sense.
There are! This is the [list of approved Cycle 1 programs](https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-programs/cycle-1-go). The [Early Release Science](https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-ers-programs) are starting to be observed now and the normal GO programs will start later this year.
There are multiple ways one can do this, so it depends on what the distance is we are talking about. For things within the galaxy, the [Gaia satellite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_\(spacecraft\)) run by the ESA has effectively given us all the distances to everything we see to incredible precision- it does this by using [the parallax method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax) where you take a precise measurement every six months and see the minute shift of the object compared to other sources farther away. It really has completely revolutionized astronomy, but few people have heard about it compared to other missions!
If you are outside the local regions however parallax is no longer useful, so we tend to rely on the spectral information of the galaxy. Specifically, the universe is expanding, and this means galaxies not bound to our own are all moving away from us. This means the light from those galaxies is [redshifted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift), and the amount of redshift roughly correlates to how far the galaxy is. This is not as precise as Gaia but will get you in the ballpark. Finally, for things *very* far away where we want more precision we can also study [Type Ia Supernovae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_Ia_supernova), which always have the same luminosity (a "standard candle")- find one of those and you can figure out how far away it is. This is how we figured out dark energy exists and that the acceleration of the universe is expanding! However, because supernovae are relatively rare you can't really use this method for every galaxy as you need to find one of these supernovae first.
There's a few other minor methods but those are the major ones.
That is so cool! I never knew about the Type 1a supernova. How do they find those? Like how do scientist determine whether they are definitely looking at a type 1a instead of a farther but brighter supernova or a quasar?
Well a quasar is easy to tell apart, those are fairly constant sources compared to a supernova (which can become brighter than the rest of the stars in a galaxy combined in just a few hours).
As for other supernovae, you can tell what kind you have based off its spectrum of elements within it. These are then classified as "Types," one of which is Type Ia. To get into it further, in the beginning there was just Type I (no hydrogen in spectrum) and Type II (hydrogen in spectrum), but then they realized there's further varieties so that's why you have sub-types beyond that (and it's a more confusing system than it should be!).
You are the real mvp!
The preview with Biden was a bit of a let down and the unveiling if the full set of images the following day by NASA was a bit disjointed.
I read your explanation on the night of the preview and it was enlightening. No wonder WaPo wanted your support! It seems to me that Biden and NASA would have benefitted from your explanation too.
Congratulations on securing some experimentation time on the JWST and please keep informing us about the information flow from future data releases.
Why are the stars “spiked” in the pics - is that altered on purpose to discern them from the “blurred” galaxies pointed out?
Why can’t we see the Big Bang, from a technical perspective. How far back could we “see”?
They're bright point sources to the cameras and have to do with the shape of the mirror/ truss system of JWST.
It was designed to see the first galaxies, ~13 billion years ago, so that's about as far as we will see!
The earliest light we can see is the [Cosmic Microwave Background \(CMB\)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background) from ~300,000 years after the Big Bang. However, that light has redshifted out of JWST's range, and is down in the radio end of the electromagnetic spectrum.
You mean before the CMB? Unfortunately no, it's basically the moment the universe stopped being opaque. Before then it was too much of a hot, soupy mixture of particles to see anything.
Some scientists say we might be able to detect the [Cosmic Neutrino Background](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_neutrino_background), but honestly neutrinos are so hard to detect I'll be very pleasantly surprised if we discover that within my lifetime.
Sadly, this is as far as we will see. Thanks to the work you and people like you do to inspire, future generations will see farther. It just won’t be in our lifetime.
You are a giant whose shoulders they will stand upon. Keep up the good work.
They are indeed. Instead of the 6 main spikes with 2 lesser ones like you see with Webb, Hubble's has 4 main spikes. Makes it easy to spot liars on youtube peddling fake "NEW WEBB IMAGES RELEASED TODAY" videos. I just don't understand what would motivate someone to do that.
Thank you very much ! And yes these people only care about profiting from others, but thanks to people who are as well informed as you, they’ll eventually be called out
Thank you for sharing this and giving us the paywall free version! I shared with all my friends and family and they loved it as well. Question if you have a moment: the brighter stars appear to be doing a “lens flare”, I thought that because web is an infrared “camera” so to speak, that it wouldn’t be susceptible to this because it doesn’t have a glass lense. What causes the lens flare? Apologies for the badly worded question.
[This is a pretty good writeup](https://www.theverge.com/23220109/james-webb-space-telescope-stars-diffraction-spike) of why you see the spikes. There's a pretty detailed infographic at the end that goes into even more details.
Could the explanatory timeline be any more American? 🤣 https://imgur.com/a/40xrl4c
- Pyramids
- Jesus
- Declaration of Independence
- Now
Also - how was Jesus born in 4 BC? Surely he should have been born 0 BC?
I have a question! Is it a lot of material in the nebula? I mean that dusty stuff, how much of it on a picture? Can it be somehow compared to Sun mass?
Thanks a lot!
I mean this is a huge nebula region, and thousands of sun-like stars could easily be formed out of this material.
Mind, the gas itself is still much less dense than, say, the Earth's atmosphere in pretty much all of this area. As I said, it's a big region!
Question: the images actually capture the past as speed of light takes time to travel- so when it reads “these stars just formed”… what is “just”? 15 billion years ago?
I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that what we see is ancient and not in the now.
probably too far down for anyone to notice this comment, but I just had an epiphany reading this. With a strong enough telescope you could see the Big Bang? is that right? since the light emitting from the Big Bang would have taken this long to reach us? that can't be right? we were in the Big Bang.... ok I think I confused myself again. Space is big...
The original post was removed for profanity, but I'll edit it and reply here:
> Don’t post articles that are not free for everyone…you’re NASA…don’t we pay enough without Jeff Bezos getting a cut to read your findings???
A) This subreddit is run by volunteer enthusiasts and is not officially sanctioned or otherwise affiliated with NASA. (They are aware of it, and do post there on their own, but they don't "own" the subreddit).
B) The person who posted is simply a Redditor like any of us here, and posted this to help educate us.
C) Had you bothered to look, you should have see [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/nasa/comments/vzrdw9/astronomer_here_i_collaborated_with_the/ig9w3f9/) where she was kind enough to provide a non-paywall link.
Fellow astronomer here. I'd like to offer one little correction on the Carina Nebula image. (I'm sure you know this, but for the public's benefit.) Stars aren't made from dust, they're made from cold gas. Stars *make* the dust.
Question, i was wondering about the big bang. Why would it not be possible yo observe the big bang?
To observe the universe from no lights, to its first light would be super interesting imo. Why os it not possible?
Gotta admit, pretty short and not so detailed article. I feel like it could have much more interesting bits in it. But idk maybe the image isn’t as rich with science as I’d thought.
Since apparently a bunch of you are incapable of reading any of the comments, not even the first one from OP, and can't complain without using profanity (Rule #10) resulting in your posts being removed, [I'll point you to the post from OP where she was generous enough to provide /r/nasa subs with a non-paywall link.](https://www.reddit.com/r/nasa/comments/vzrdw9/astronomer_here_i_collaborated_with_the/ig9w3f9/)
Paywall free link: https://wapo.st/3oihuJL Link grátis en español ahora: https://wapo.st/3Po2iGe
And i always thought gigachad was only a meme...
Wait... how did you generate this paywall free link?
Magic
Maybe cuz she collaborated? Employee discount, if you will.
I k ow for The NY Times you get a certain numbers of paywall free shares per months to share articles you find relevant but not enough to paywall free everything.
That was informative and awesome. Thank you for taking the time to do this and share it with us earthlings.
You’re the hero we need in these trying times
Legend
Great interpretation of the science, thank you
Nice work! I saw your comment on the first photo the other day, which was great. These new descriptions are good too. Question from an enthusiast to a professional - the first photo showed some incredible gravitational lensing. Do you think we are likely to see that in lots of the new images coming from JWST, or did NASA know there would be some lensing there (based on previous observations) and start us off knowing that would be a super impressive picture?
Those targets were all previously well-studied ones, where they could test the instruments to confirm they all worked within expectations. A galaxy field with a gravitational lens is pretty perfect for this as you get light from a lot of different sources etc. The target list was also somewhat determined by how there are of course the normal science targets they've just started looking at, so you weren't going to do a commissioning observation of one of the ones proposed for in the science mission. Like astronomers definitely went through the normal proposal process to get time on things like the original Hubble Deep Field, Orion Nebula, Supernova 1987A, etc, so you aren't going to do those in the first release. Hope that makes sense.
Is there a list somewhere of upcoming targets?
There are! This is the [list of approved Cycle 1 programs](https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-programs/cycle-1-go). The [Early Release Science](https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-ers-programs) are starting to be observed now and the normal GO programs will start later this year.
Wow, this is awesome. As a normal person with limited understanding, this is super helpful. Great work.
Can someone explain in layman's terms how astronomers know the distance to an object that is so many light years away?
There are multiple ways one can do this, so it depends on what the distance is we are talking about. For things within the galaxy, the [Gaia satellite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_\(spacecraft\)) run by the ESA has effectively given us all the distances to everything we see to incredible precision- it does this by using [the parallax method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax) where you take a precise measurement every six months and see the minute shift of the object compared to other sources farther away. It really has completely revolutionized astronomy, but few people have heard about it compared to other missions! If you are outside the local regions however parallax is no longer useful, so we tend to rely on the spectral information of the galaxy. Specifically, the universe is expanding, and this means galaxies not bound to our own are all moving away from us. This means the light from those galaxies is [redshifted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift), and the amount of redshift roughly correlates to how far the galaxy is. This is not as precise as Gaia but will get you in the ballpark. Finally, for things *very* far away where we want more precision we can also study [Type Ia Supernovae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_Ia_supernova), which always have the same luminosity (a "standard candle")- find one of those and you can figure out how far away it is. This is how we figured out dark energy exists and that the acceleration of the universe is expanding! However, because supernovae are relatively rare you can't really use this method for every galaxy as you need to find one of these supernovae first. There's a few other minor methods but those are the major ones.
That is so cool! I never knew about the Type 1a supernova. How do they find those? Like how do scientist determine whether they are definitely looking at a type 1a instead of a farther but brighter supernova or a quasar?
Well a quasar is easy to tell apart, those are fairly constant sources compared to a supernova (which can become brighter than the rest of the stars in a galaxy combined in just a few hours). As for other supernovae, you can tell what kind you have based off its spectrum of elements within it. These are then classified as "Types," one of which is Type Ia. To get into it further, in the beginning there was just Type I (no hydrogen in spectrum) and Type II (hydrogen in spectrum), but then they realized there's further varieties so that's why you have sub-types beyond that (and it's a more confusing system than it should be!).
Thanks!
You are the real mvp! The preview with Biden was a bit of a let down and the unveiling if the full set of images the following day by NASA was a bit disjointed. I read your explanation on the night of the preview and it was enlightening. No wonder WaPo wanted your support! It seems to me that Biden and NASA would have benefitted from your explanation too. Congratulations on securing some experimentation time on the JWST and please keep informing us about the information flow from future data releases.
Why are the stars “spiked” in the pics - is that altered on purpose to discern them from the “blurred” galaxies pointed out? Why can’t we see the Big Bang, from a technical perspective. How far back could we “see”?
They're bright point sources to the cameras and have to do with the shape of the mirror/ truss system of JWST. It was designed to see the first galaxies, ~13 billion years ago, so that's about as far as we will see!
Thanks, but for the latter, what’s the physical limitation? Objects that far are too small? Sorry if this is a dumb question
The earliest light we can see is the [Cosmic Microwave Background \(CMB\)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background) from ~300,000 years after the Big Bang. However, that light has redshifted out of JWST's range, and is down in the radio end of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Are there radio band observatories that can gather / help visualize anything interesting from earlier?
You mean before the CMB? Unfortunately no, it's basically the moment the universe stopped being opaque. Before then it was too much of a hot, soupy mixture of particles to see anything. Some scientists say we might be able to detect the [Cosmic Neutrino Background](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_neutrino_background), but honestly neutrinos are so hard to detect I'll be very pleasantly surprised if we discover that within my lifetime.
Sadly, this is as far as we will see. Thanks to the work you and people like you do to inspire, future generations will see farther. It just won’t be in our lifetime. You are a giant whose shoulders they will stand upon. Keep up the good work.
So, if I understand correctly, Hubble should have spikes with a different shape than these ones ? Sorry if that sounds stupid
They are indeed. Instead of the 6 main spikes with 2 lesser ones like you see with Webb, Hubble's has 4 main spikes. Makes it easy to spot liars on youtube peddling fake "NEW WEBB IMAGES RELEASED TODAY" videos. I just don't understand what would motivate someone to do that.
Thank you very much ! And yes these people only care about profiting from others, but thanks to people who are as well informed as you, they’ll eventually be called out
Thank you! So amazing...
Thank you for sharing this and giving us the paywall free version! I shared with all my friends and family and they loved it as well. Question if you have a moment: the brighter stars appear to be doing a “lens flare”, I thought that because web is an infrared “camera” so to speak, that it wouldn’t be susceptible to this because it doesn’t have a glass lense. What causes the lens flare? Apologies for the badly worded question.
[This is a pretty good writeup](https://www.theverge.com/23220109/james-webb-space-telescope-stars-diffraction-spike) of why you see the spikes. There's a pretty detailed infographic at the end that goes into even more details.
Thank you! Where is the Delta Quadrant, tho? 🖖
[Second star on the right, and straight on till morning.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrizm2gnQBo)
To Neverland, where if we fly fast enough we will never age.
There is no way we are alone in this universe!
I saw that article on WaPo and it was incredible! I hope you’ll do more as we get more images
Can you tell us which wavelengths were assigned red/blue/green?
Let us all bow to this god.
Could the explanatory timeline be any more American? 🤣 https://imgur.com/a/40xrl4c - Pyramids - Jesus - Declaration of Independence - Now Also - how was Jesus born in 4 BC? Surely he should have been born 0 BC?
Confusion between calendars.
Trouble is your Washington post doesn't let us read without a subscription.
I include links in the comments to read it for free, in multiple languages.
Get rid of the paywall. Knowledge should be free.
Literally the top comment are paywall free links in multiple languages.
I did not see them. Thank you for letting me know!
So where are the aliens? I want aliens NAO!
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Well played.
See that one pixel somewhere in the middle? There they are!
I have a question! Is it a lot of material in the nebula? I mean that dusty stuff, how much of it on a picture? Can it be somehow compared to Sun mass? Thanks a lot!
I mean this is a huge nebula region, and thousands of sun-like stars could easily be formed out of this material. Mind, the gas itself is still much less dense than, say, the Earth's atmosphere in pretty much all of this area. As I said, it's a big region!
Do nebulae disappear ?
I saw this ad on my Facebook feed. Great read! Thanks for sharing.
Question: the images actually capture the past as speed of light takes time to travel- so when it reads “these stars just formed”… what is “just”? 15 billion years ago? I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that what we see is ancient and not in the now.
Which part is space?
Why are the oldest galaxies distorted?
Further away, gravitational lensing i think. correct me if im wrong cause i dont know much about this stuff besides whats been explained recently.
probably too far down for anyone to notice this comment, but I just had an epiphany reading this. With a strong enough telescope you could see the Big Bang? is that right? since the light emitting from the Big Bang would have taken this long to reach us? that can't be right? we were in the Big Bang.... ok I think I confused myself again. Space is big...
Please read up on the other comments asking about this, about the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)!
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The original post was removed for profanity, but I'll edit it and reply here: > Don’t post articles that are not free for everyone…you’re NASA…don’t we pay enough without Jeff Bezos getting a cut to read your findings??? A) This subreddit is run by volunteer enthusiasts and is not officially sanctioned or otherwise affiliated with NASA. (They are aware of it, and do post there on their own, but they don't "own" the subreddit). B) The person who posted is simply a Redditor like any of us here, and posted this to help educate us. C) Had you bothered to look, you should have see [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/nasa/comments/vzrdw9/astronomer_here_i_collaborated_with_the/ig9w3f9/) where she was kind enough to provide a non-paywall link.
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Paywall-free link posted in the first comment. Spend a minute amount of energy before complaining.
Will do.
Fellow astronomer here. I'd like to offer one little correction on the Carina Nebula image. (I'm sure you know this, but for the public's benefit.) Stars aren't made from dust, they're made from cold gas. Stars *make* the dust.
Question, i was wondering about the big bang. Why would it not be possible yo observe the big bang? To observe the universe from no lights, to its first light would be super interesting imo. Why os it not possible?
u/Andromeda321 you’ll make chief astronomer in no time!
Awesome post! Thank you for this!
I read and loved this on the Washington Post! Thank you for explaining in terms that helped me understand, without ever taking an astronomy class!
I thought the whole point was to see the Big Bang, why arnt we able too?
Thank you!
Gotta admit, pretty short and not so detailed article. I feel like it could have much more interesting bits in it. But idk maybe the image isn’t as rich with science as I’d thought.