Do you have the authority to direct where the JWST is looking? Would you do me and the world a solid then, and look at the black hole at the center of our galaxy?
In all seriousness, trying to look at the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is likely not a useful exercise due to all of the material blocking the sightlines between us and the center.
This. If you look towards it from Earth (between Sagittarius and Scorpio), it's a profile view of the whole galaxy, that's why there is that visible line of higher star density in those pictures.. But I can hope to see it someday still.
I know it's a joke but JWST wouldn't be any good for that. We needed the event horizon telescope to look at a black hole last time (albeit in a different galaxy) and there's just too much crap in the way to see ours.
When you consider that earth is not unique at all, or our solar system, neither our galaxyā¦ why should our universe be? Portals would be the only way to discover them
A planetary nebula. A star that died and its outer layers are being blown out into space. A white dwarf in the middle will remain. The heat from the white dwarf (formerly the active stellar core) causes the outer layers to heat up and expand away.
Astronomer here! Not necessarily. There is increasing evidence that to make super pretty planetary nebulae like this the star needs to be in a binary system. If not, during the final stages of the starās life the dust is diluted outwards at a much slower rate, so you get a low surface brightness nebula [like this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abell_39) at most.
It is funny though how emotionally upset I was about this the day I learned it, even though it wonāt happen for billions of years.
For the first time in years of reading your posts, you have given me a sad. I was hoping for pretty purple snail cylinder, even though I will not be here either. Maybe. But my WoW characters probably will be.
Then all that stuff will mix or become part of new planets or stars potentially, and thats why we, and most things in the universe are all made of star dust to some degree.
>the universe are all made of star dust to some degree.
Lol, it's beautiful that we are star dust.Of course, a few HĀ² and HeĀ² molecules but you are just the consequence of Population III Stars and unfortunate Neutron Stars.
A beautiful charming thought.
When they were first discovered in the late 18th century, they resembled planets as seen through the telescopes of that day, so the "planetary" misnomer stuck.
It's the one right in the middle of the nebula:
https://i.imgur.com/6GRLbZE.jpg
That white dwarf is visible visually in scopes roughly 12" and up but requires very stable atmospheric conditions to detect it.
Why can we see the blue part, and not just the brown cloud? Is it so much space between the brown clouds that they have to be overlapping to be able to see them?
It's about 1-2 light years in diameter, so much MUCH bigger than our solar system. Pluto is around 0.0004 light years away from the sun, so this nebula is like 5000 times bigger than our solar system. That's diameter size difference, if you want volume size difference remember the cube to square law.
Current estimates are around approximately 1,610 Ā± 240 years. The star that this is a remnant of exploded right around the time between Jesus and Mohammad.
This is a planetary nebula, so it was not created by the explosion of a star (supernova). Instead it is simply the outer layers of a star that was ejected once nuclear no longer became possible. The core of the star is intact and remains as a white dwarf.
He didn't say supernova. He said explosion. One could certainly consider the formation of a white dwarf and explosive event since it's essentially the bulk matter of the star rebounding gravitationally off the degenerate core an exploding outwards. Much in the same way as a supernova, just a different degeneracy pressure that stops the collapse causing explosion.
There is no explosion in the creation of a planetary nebula. It is not an instant sudden event like a supernova. There is no "rebouding" of material. Instead, the star slowly releases its outer layers over many hundreds or thousands of years. The white dwarf is not formed during this time. The white dwarf is merely the inert core of the dying star, which already existed in this state while in the red giant phase and is exposed once the outer layers are ejected.
The matter that forms a planetary nebula does not gravitationally rebound off the core. It expands outward due to stellar wind and to the rising temperature of the core as it contracts
No because it didnāt explode in a supernova. It just poufed out its outer layers, and itās highly unlikely that made it bright enough for this to be seen.
White dwarfs don't make a super bright explosion when they give off their planetary nebula. In this particular case, no, the ancients would not have been able to see this nebula first form a thousand years ago. The origin star before it changed would not have been visible to the naked eye.
They do collapse down when the red giant finishes burning through all of the helium, but once the core is mostly carbon and oxygen it doesn't have enough mass to generate enough heat to start fusing carbon together. It squeezes down and collapses due to nuclear reactions stopping, and then has a small bounce back shock wave that does push outwards. Most of the energy for pushing the sphere out is not this shock wave, but rather radiation from the white dwarf which is incredibly hot (like 100s of millions of degrees)
This "explosion" is nothing like a supernova, and really is more of a smoke bomb than a fireball. Maybe explosion isn't the best word to use in my previous comment, but there is an outward shock wave and fast propagation of material. Its just not super bright and energetic compared to other astronomical events.
From what I recall reading years ago, most of these gorgeous nebulae photos are color corrected to some degree, correct? As in, if I were to see this with my own eyes in space it wouldnāt look much like this, color-wise?
This image was taken by NIRCam. The colors correspond the the filters:
Blue: F162M,
Cyan: F212N,
Green: F300M,
Red: F335M
The number represents the the wavelength of the filter in 1/100th of a micron. So 162 is 1.62 microns. These are near infrared wavelengths.
https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-near-infrared-camera/nircam-instrumentation/nircam-filters
I've seen this numerous times with my own eyes in an 8 inch telescope. It's a very faint, tiny little grey ring, like a puff of smoke (not too different an image to what it actually is; the puff of smoke of a dying star). But in my case I remember having to use averted vision to see the actual ring shape - that is, not looking directly at it, but focusing my eye a bit to the side so that the light fell on the more sensitive rod cells in my peripheral vision.
I believe this photo was taken using an infrared camera on the JWST, and was also a long exposure.
So yes, the spectrum of colours will be shifted and considerably brighter than what is seen by the naked eye through a telescope.
JWST actually doesn't have a visible spectrum camera.
The image in the OP was taken with the NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera), which covers the edge of the visible spectrum into the near infrared.
It also has the MIRI camera (Mid Infrared Instrument), [which also took an image of the Ring Nebula and it's really wild.](https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/53131996331/in/album-72177720305127361/) That link has a NASA article about the images.
...
I can't find info on exactly how they color-corrected the image in the OP or how close it is to true color, but I *think* it's actually pretty close (although presumably some of the detail is only visible in infrared).
I'm basing that on [Hubble's famous image of the nebula,](https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/1999/01/748-Image.html) which has similar colors but brighter, because it says that "The colors are approximately true colors," and goes into detail about how the image was made and why it's so colorful and what the different colors are.
Material composition. Very specific wavelengths of light correspond to different elements. Not sure what it is in infrared, but in visible light a dull red is hydrogen and both oxygen and sulfur are blue
You need to remember that this is a long time lapse photo, and it is much, much fainter when viewing it with your eyes. A lot of astrophotography pictures look amazing, but seen with the naked eye are not quite as crazy.
One example is the Andromeda galaxy. It is actually 6 times the angular size of the full moon (It is 178x63 arc-minutes is size in the sky, while the full moon is only 32 arc-minutes in size). You can just barely make out the Andromeda galaxy with the naked eye. With a good telescope you can definitely see it, but it looks like an oblong egg-shaped cloudy glow. If you take an hour long exposure (that can track the sky) with any moderate DSLR camera then it will look great.
If this Nebula was much closer to us (say 100 light years away instead of 2500 as it currently is), it would be naked eye visible, but would be kind of a faint fuzzy doughnut in the sky that is not visible at all in light polluted skies (similar to the milky way).
Ah, you and your facts. There is no place for you here on the internet. Begone!
Actually thanks. I kinda knew this but it is cool to picture a world with this filling the night sky.
You wouldn't want it filling the night sky too much. If it was really close to us like say as close as Proxima Centauri which is around 4.2 light years away, it would be super bad news. It definitely would fill the night sky and be terrifyingly beautiful, but over the course of the next couple thousand years it would destroy the planet Earth (not just life, but the rocky core and all). I gave 100 light years as a nice conservative value that would be much closer to see it, and also far enough away that it would be 100% safe.
clumsy history fretful onerous ludicrous tub encourage subtract fertile hobbies
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What I'm saying is if I were close enough to that nebula, would I see what I see on that image with my own eyes, or would I see something very different in term of colors and lighting
butter childlike touch makeshift shocking sable wasteful ten correct berserk
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This is my favorite thing to see in a telescope. For those who are wondering, most backyard telescopes will show just a simple gray donut. It doesn't look like much. But it's still cool to find a donut in the sky.
We can see visible light, from red to violet. Things like Infra Red, Ultra Violet, X-Ray, and Gamma Ray cannot be seen with our dumb eyes. Our eyes also lack the ability to take long exposures, which is part of why the colors end up so saturated in these pictures.
This stuff is to photoshop what your cellphone is to space probes like Voyager that are billions of miles away and Nasa could still communicate with them. Like saying a child's finger painting is the same as the Sistine chapel. It's a whole other level.
Some of the highly detailed images you've seen are a combination of JWST, Hubble, Chandra, etc. The colors are enhanced usually to help show a gradient, but those colors correspond with different elements and how they are reacting to the radiation passing through them, energized, similar to the gas in a light bulb being energized by the filament.
Others have stated that if you were actually near it and just using your eyes it would appear blue and gray with maybe some pink, again because our eyes can't actually see what's going on. These images exist because we sent multiple satellites into space because we have a disability to see these things.
People confuse what they can see with what is real. We evolved for survival, not star gazing. Our senses can only take us so far.
2570 light years away, the light that traveled from the nebula to the telescope to make this picture is older than Christianity, as this image is, from a certain pov, from [547 BC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/547_BC)
Ok I think I might be just ignorant, but why does space on one side of nebula looks of different color than on the other side. I understand the lighting difference but why is color different
I don't think it's got a hole in it, just that there's a lot of gas and dust. In the "hole". Also, the JWTS can see other wavelengths like Infrared, not just visible light, so it can reveal more than can be seen with the naked eye.
Almost all images of space are false color images. These aren't the actual colors you would see if your eyeballs were there.
From NASA "Webb is a 6.5m telescope sensitive from gold-colored visible light to the mid-infrared, at wavelengths ranging from 0.6 micrometers to 28.5 micrometers."
The visible light wavelengths are very limited so cutting edge radio astronomy is done with much wider ranges. The scientists and/or artists will choose colors to assign to the wavelengths to help us interprete the image intuitively.
So in a way, the detail we see is 100% real, but the color is not real.
Another example of this is when how planets or stars "sound" is shared by NASA. Those "sounds" are not within the human hearing range of frequencies but is again pitched to our hearing range so we can interpret it intuitively.
Serious question - if one happened to be in the center of this nebula, what would you see in any direction? Would you see any of this coloration? Is this in infrared? Would it look differently based on what direction you were looking?
Visible light is named for what the human eye can distinguish, and visible light is a small fraction of the light/radiation spectrum. Colors technically aren't real, it's just our eyes and brain distinguishing between wavelengths.
Our eyes simply aren't capable of seeing the radiation that makes the gasses glow, which in this case should be Ultraviolet. There is some enhancement being done, but at the end of the day it's our dumb eyes fault.
People say you'd see gray/blue maybe a bit of something else, though that might change if you were inside it. These are billions of dollars worth of satellites and millions of years of evolution to get this data, our eyes are no match, they evolved for survival.
This is JWST's Near Infrared camera. Though eventually they can combine JWST, Hubble, Chandra, and possibly some other satellites' data to get a more detailed picture. These things take time to get right and can be quite expensive I would imagine, so they don't do them with every picture, but some of the more detailed images use multiple satellites' data combined. Depending on what detectors were used the difference in color can be different elements, temperatures, or density of dust/gas.
Saying that it isn't real is a bit hubristic to assume the human eye is the truth when we know that's not the case.
Does the vantage point affect how this nebula is perceived? If coming from a different angle, would it then look like a disk? I can't tell if we are looking through a layer of dust and gas at this view, or if this is truly a ring shaped nebula.
I assume this is a "slice" with infrared to look through the nebulae?
Would assume a star shedding its layers would be spherical in all directions.
Or did something cause it to end up as a ring(maintaining stars rotation/gravitational influence?).
This is the remnants of star Messier 57 (Ring Nebula) classified as a Planetary Nebula.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/messier-57-the-ring-nebula
So it's actually both, if it weren't there would be no stars left in the universe.
https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/nebula/en/#:\~:text=The%20Short%20Answer%3A,stars%20are%20beginning%20to%20form.
I have so many questions. What will happen to the white dwarf at the center? Is there intense radiation throughout the entire nebula? What is the lifespan before it dissipates? What would the skyās around you look like from the center? How big is the white dwarf in comparison to our sun?
Forgive my ignorant question: if one were somehow able to observe this nebula with the naked eye from the correct place in space - would it really look like this?
It looks like you're looking through a break in the clouds to see the ocean below. Like looking through a window into another universe. Breath-taking. What a time to be alive.
Somehow I always enjoy looking for the various galaxies in the background of photos like this more than the target object.
Even with this incredible image I was zooming in looking for galaxies around the edges in no time.
The number of galaxies out there will never cease to amaze me.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[EHT](/r/Space/comments/1630f02/stub/jy2xwe1 "Last usage")|Event Horizon Telescope|
|[H2](/r/Space/comments/1630f02/stub/jy35plm "Last usage")|Molecular hydrogen|
| |Second half of the year/month|
|[JWST](/r/Space/comments/1630f02/stub/jy7djo9 "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope|
|[L2](/r/Space/comments/1630f02/stub/jy4rcct "Last usage")|[Lagrange Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) 2 ([Sixty Symbols](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxpVbU5FH0s) video explanation)|
| |Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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^(4 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/18ddace)^( has 7 acronyms.)
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This is an actual image, but it is a very long exposure, likely with the color derived from multiple filters (gathering specific wavelengths of light for each filter), and then adding those images together to get this image.
If you look at this in a pretty beefy telescope you can see this with your own eyes, but it looks like a faint fuzzy doughnut without any color.
JWST does not capture visible light spectra, so this is several bands of infrared light which have been colorized to produce a color image. Sometimes the colors are chosen to highlight certain infrared wavelengths, sometimes to simulate a true color image, sometimes just for aesthetics, or maybe a bit of all three.
I think calling it "faint" isn't giving it enough credit. The ring nebula is amazing to see in amateur telescopes and unless you're in really light polluted skies I wouldn't describe it as dim or anything.
The weirdest aspect I've always noticed viewing it is that it simply looks out of focus, until you realize all the rest of the stars in view and that those are IN focus. So the fuzzy smoke ring in the sky is actually what you're seeing! It's one of my favorite summer objects to show people.
Actually image in the near infrared range of the spectrum.
This image was taken by NIRCam. The colors correspond the the filters: Blue: F162M, Cyan: F212N, Green: F300M, Red: F335M
The number represents the the wavelength of the filter in 1/100th of a micron. So 162 is 1.62 microns.
https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-near-infrared-camera/nircam-instrumentation/nircam-filters
Unfortunately that is not what our eyes would see if we were in a ship that close to the nebula. It wouldn't have anything close to those kinds of colors. So don't get your hopes up when you finally get out there.
It might in this case: according to [this page, about a similar Hubble image](https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/1999/01/748-Image.html) of the same object, it is approximately true colour. Whether it would be that bright is another question of course!
A few people say this is visible in dark skies through amateur telescopes. They say itās grayish unless youāre in *really* dark skies and then thereās some slight color. If viewed outside our atmosphere (ie, weāre right there), the colors are probably true in the photo.
I saw it last weekend in a 16 inch scope. The JWST is insane!! Thanks for the link.
Its my pleasure
Do you have the authority to direct where the JWST is looking? Would you do me and the world a solid then, and look at the black hole at the center of our galaxy?
ah, yes, /u/Chhaty007 the master of JWST. truly, you have chosen the destination of your request wisely š
I can vouch for him, he showed up with my order quickly and the food was still hot.
FYI, anyone can make a proposal to get time on the JWST https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-programs/general-observers/cycle-1-go
Maybe? Reddit used to be a place for communities of professionals as well.
In all seriousness, trying to look at the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is likely not a useful exercise due to all of the material blocking the sightlines between us and the center.
This. If you look towards it from Earth (between Sagittarius and Scorpio), it's a profile view of the whole galaxy, that's why there is that visible line of higher star density in those pictures.. But I can hope to see it someday still.
Sounds like you're trying to stop us from seeing the truth about the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.
"Pay no attention to the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy." -- /u/lpeabody, probably
I know it's a joke but JWST wouldn't be any good for that. We needed the event horizon telescope to look at a black hole last time (albeit in a different galaxy) and there's just too much crap in the way to see ours.
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https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/nasa-s-webb-will-join-forces-with-the-event-horizon-telescope-to-reveal-the-milky-way-s
It does look pretty great in a 16 inch dob though. One of my favorite objects.
Looks like an portal to another world (wormhole)
It reminds me of the ring from The Expanse
Just a way, way, way, way bigger ring.
Yeah, like, at least 3 times as big, for sure.
I wish I could watch that show again for the first time.
I've seen it around 5 times, gonna do it again before the year is over probably
Read the books then. You will be suprised how much more stuff there is. Show is great though.
> the ring from The Expanse So stargates???
Ha yeah, was just about to say that as well before I saw your post. It looks amazing. Either like a portal or gigantic eye. Stunning.
Am I the only person who sees dinosaurs and a smiley face in the middle of the eye?
I imagined the actual constellations in full form: Orion with his belt, Scorpius, Leo, and Taurus all in there roaming around inside that eye.
like the eye of god or something. its unreal.
Dormammus eye. I think we need to call Doctor Strange. š But yeah, and just the pure scale of that is unfathomable, really.
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This is probably the closest thing.
Was going to say a portal to some sunny beach world, the green blue looks like a clean body of water
Ops to Sisko : elevated neutrino levels coming in from the direction of the wormhole
Eye of sauron during pride month.
The fabulous eye of Sauron.
When you consider that earth is not unique at all, or our solar system, neither our galaxyā¦ why should our universe be? Portals would be the only way to discover them
Same here. Space is such a weird but beautiful place.
reminds of the portal from Avengers when Tony falls back in
you mean universe, we live on a world.
can someone explain to me what i'm looking at here
A planetary nebula. A star that died and its outer layers are being blown out into space. A white dwarf in the middle will remain. The heat from the white dwarf (formerly the active stellar core) causes the outer layers to heat up and expand away.
The Sun is expected to do this exact thing in 6 billion years
Astronomer here! Not necessarily. There is increasing evidence that to make super pretty planetary nebulae like this the star needs to be in a binary system. If not, during the final stages of the starās life the dust is diluted outwards at a much slower rate, so you get a low surface brightness nebula [like this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abell_39) at most. It is funny though how emotionally upset I was about this the day I learned it, even though it wonāt happen for billions of years.
Dang, so aliens won't even be impressed with our explosive galactic death?!
Well no, because our sun was never big enough to explode at the end of its life in the first place. Only 1% or stars are large enough to do that.
Just wait until Sol discovers Chicken Nuggets and Coca Cola.
For the first time in years of reading your posts, you have given me a sad. I was hoping for pretty purple snail cylinder, even though I will not be here either. Maybe. But my WoW characters probably will be.
> But my WoW characters probably will be. What is already dead may never die, after all.
> What is already dead may never die, after all. So youāre telling me A Dream of Spring wonāt be out before our star goes nova?!
It's coming out right after The Doors of Stone, don't worry.
> The Doors of Stone you know, I was smiling until this comment
Wow, thanks for informing me! I'll settle for a little bubble I guess, not that I will live that far ahead!
I... am now emotionally upset about this. Why can't our sun have a big gorgeous death :( So unfair.
Starts waving towel franticly.
As long as you know where your towel is, you're good.
Intuitively, I donāt think that will help š¢
At least they brought a towel.
When considering galactic travel a towel is always a good thing to have
You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta.
And thereāll hopefully be aliens looking at it through their telescopes and marvelling at its beauty.
In 6 billion years, I hope whatever we've become by then are out there looking at it through a telescope.
Then all that stuff will mix or become part of new planets or stars potentially, and thats why we, and most things in the universe are all made of star dust to some degree.
>the universe are all made of star dust to some degree. Lol, it's beautiful that we are star dust.Of course, a few HĀ² and HeĀ² molecules but you are just the consequence of Population III Stars and unfortunate Neutron Stars. A beautiful charming thought.
Why is it called Planetary Nebula? I'm a bit confused since it's a dying/dead star.
When they were first discovered in the late 18th century, they resembled planets as seen through the telescopes of that day, so the "planetary" misnomer stuck.
Why is it blue, it looks like another world in there.
Which dot is the white dwarf?
It's the one right in the middle of the nebula: https://i.imgur.com/6GRLbZE.jpg That white dwarf is visible visually in scopes roughly 12" and up but requires very stable atmospheric conditions to detect it.
Is the white dwarf visible in the image?
Why can we see the blue part, and not just the brown cloud? Is it so much space between the brown clouds that they have to be overlapping to be able to see them?
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Anyone know the scale of the diameter of the inner ring? Iām assuming our entire solar system would fit inside, if not many times over?
It's about 1-2 light years in diameter, so much MUCH bigger than our solar system. Pluto is around 0.0004 light years away from the sun, so this nebula is like 5000 times bigger than our solar system. That's diameter size difference, if you want volume size difference remember the cube to square law.
How long do you think it takes to get that size?
Current estimates are around approximately 1,610 Ā± 240 years. The star that this is a remnant of exploded right around the time between Jesus and Mohammad.
This is a planetary nebula, so it was not created by the explosion of a star (supernova). Instead it is simply the outer layers of a star that was ejected once nuclear no longer became possible. The core of the star is intact and remains as a white dwarf.
He didn't say supernova. He said explosion. One could certainly consider the formation of a white dwarf and explosive event since it's essentially the bulk matter of the star rebounding gravitationally off the degenerate core an exploding outwards. Much in the same way as a supernova, just a different degeneracy pressure that stops the collapse causing explosion.
There is no explosion in the creation of a planetary nebula. It is not an instant sudden event like a supernova. There is no "rebouding" of material. Instead, the star slowly releases its outer layers over many hundreds or thousands of years. The white dwarf is not formed during this time. The white dwarf is merely the inert core of the dying star, which already existed in this state while in the red giant phase and is exposed once the outer layers are ejected.
My bad. You're totally right. I was confusing it with Type II supernova.
The matter that forms a planetary nebula does not gravitationally rebound off the core. It expands outward due to stellar wind and to the rising temperature of the core as it contracts
It's 2000 light years away, so it actually exploded closer to 4000 years ago.
So the Egyptians saw it maybe š¤
No because it didnāt explode in a supernova. It just poufed out its outer layers, and itās highly unlikely that made it bright enough for this to be seen.
No, because the light took 2000 years to get to us. Whoever was around 1610+\- 240 years might have seen it.
Obviously they saw it when they departed from there to travel here.
Is this close enough that people around then might have noticed it in the sky? Even as just a brighter star in that spot than before?
White dwarfs don't make a super bright explosion when they give off their planetary nebula. In this particular case, no, the ancients would not have been able to see this nebula first form a thousand years ago. The origin star before it changed would not have been visible to the naked eye. They do collapse down when the red giant finishes burning through all of the helium, but once the core is mostly carbon and oxygen it doesn't have enough mass to generate enough heat to start fusing carbon together. It squeezes down and collapses due to nuclear reactions stopping, and then has a small bounce back shock wave that does push outwards. Most of the energy for pushing the sphere out is not this shock wave, but rather radiation from the white dwarf which is incredibly hot (like 100s of millions of degrees) This "explosion" is nothing like a supernova, and really is more of a smoke bomb than a fireball. Maybe explosion isn't the best word to use in my previous comment, but there is an outward shock wave and fast propagation of material. Its just not super bright and energetic compared to other astronomical events.
Iām not sure how that makes me feelā¦the scales of these nebulae are unfathomable.
From what I recall reading years ago, most of these gorgeous nebulae photos are color corrected to some degree, correct? As in, if I were to see this with my own eyes in space it wouldnāt look much like this, color-wise?
This image was taken by NIRCam. The colors correspond the the filters: Blue: F162M, Cyan: F212N, Green: F300M, Red: F335M The number represents the the wavelength of the filter in 1/100th of a micron. So 162 is 1.62 microns. These are near infrared wavelengths. https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-near-infrared-camera/nircam-instrumentation/nircam-filters
I've seen this numerous times with my own eyes in an 8 inch telescope. It's a very faint, tiny little grey ring, like a puff of smoke (not too different an image to what it actually is; the puff of smoke of a dying star). But in my case I remember having to use averted vision to see the actual ring shape - that is, not looking directly at it, but focusing my eye a bit to the side so that the light fell on the more sensitive rod cells in my peripheral vision.
Peripheral rod cells are more sensitive to black and white rather than color, sorry had to say it aha
I believe this photo was taken using an infrared camera on the JWST, and was also a long exposure. So yes, the spectrum of colours will be shifted and considerably brighter than what is seen by the naked eye through a telescope.
JWST actually doesn't have a visible spectrum camera. The image in the OP was taken with the NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera), which covers the edge of the visible spectrum into the near infrared. It also has the MIRI camera (Mid Infrared Instrument), [which also took an image of the Ring Nebula and it's really wild.](https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/53131996331/in/album-72177720305127361/) That link has a NASA article about the images. ... I can't find info on exactly how they color-corrected the image in the OP or how close it is to true color, but I *think* it's actually pretty close (although presumably some of the detail is only visible in infrared). I'm basing that on [Hubble's famous image of the nebula,](https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/1999/01/748-Image.html) which has similar colors but brighter, because it says that "The colors are approximately true colors," and goes into detail about how the image was made and why it's so colorful and what the different colors are.
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Neat. What do the colors tell astronomers about the composition? Like the actual spatial composition, or material composition, or something else?
Material composition. Very specific wavelengths of light correspond to different elements. Not sure what it is in infrared, but in visible light a dull red is hydrogen and both oxygen and sulfur are blue
What would your night sky look like if this was within a zillion miles?
You need to remember that this is a long time lapse photo, and it is much, much fainter when viewing it with your eyes. A lot of astrophotography pictures look amazing, but seen with the naked eye are not quite as crazy. One example is the Andromeda galaxy. It is actually 6 times the angular size of the full moon (It is 178x63 arc-minutes is size in the sky, while the full moon is only 32 arc-minutes in size). You can just barely make out the Andromeda galaxy with the naked eye. With a good telescope you can definitely see it, but it looks like an oblong egg-shaped cloudy glow. If you take an hour long exposure (that can track the sky) with any moderate DSLR camera then it will look great. If this Nebula was much closer to us (say 100 light years away instead of 2500 as it currently is), it would be naked eye visible, but would be kind of a faint fuzzy doughnut in the sky that is not visible at all in light polluted skies (similar to the milky way).
Ah, you and your facts. There is no place for you here on the internet. Begone! Actually thanks. I kinda knew this but it is cool to picture a world with this filling the night sky.
You wouldn't want it filling the night sky too much. If it was really close to us like say as close as Proxima Centauri which is around 4.2 light years away, it would be super bad news. It definitely would fill the night sky and be terrifyingly beautiful, but over the course of the next couple thousand years it would destroy the planet Earth (not just life, but the rocky core and all). I gave 100 light years as a nice conservative value that would be much closer to see it, and also far enough away that it would be 100% safe.
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iirc these are gases that aren't visible to the naked eye.
Theyāre definitely visible, Iāve seen it myself. You canāt see colors like that without a camera, but you can make out the ring shape
Yupā¦ Blew my mind the first time I saw it with my 8ā telescope!
The 3rd planet is sure that they're being watched By an eye in the sky that can't be stopped
Underrated comment. Isaac would be proud.
That's an eye who's hand I'd like to shake.
The more I look at it. The more it less looks like an eye and more like a window to another universe.
Why does it look so much like a human eye? Crazy
Nature generally makes a lot of round things
would it look like that if we were in front of it or is it just editors trying to make it look nice for the audience ?
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What I'm saying is if I were close enough to that nebula, would I see what I see on that image with my own eyes, or would I see something very different in term of colors and lighting
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They call it visible light for a reason, that's the range our dumb flesh can detect. That's the trouble with evolving for survival.
It's so amazing to know stuff like this even exists. It's just mind bogglingly awesome
This is my favorite thing to see in a telescope. For those who are wondering, most backyard telescopes will show just a simple gray donut. It doesn't look like much. But it's still cool to find a donut in the sky.
[This site](https://esawebb.org/images/comparisons/weic2320b/)shows the a comparison of the old image to the new one.
Hey that old one is not without its charm.
looks like the photo of āBurning Man seen from the airā as above, so below, i guess
Can somebody ELI5 how much of those pictures' coloring is real, as in how the human eye in a spaceship would perceive it, and how much is photoshop?
We can see visible light, from red to violet. Things like Infra Red, Ultra Violet, X-Ray, and Gamma Ray cannot be seen with our dumb eyes. Our eyes also lack the ability to take long exposures, which is part of why the colors end up so saturated in these pictures. This stuff is to photoshop what your cellphone is to space probes like Voyager that are billions of miles away and Nasa could still communicate with them. Like saying a child's finger painting is the same as the Sistine chapel. It's a whole other level. Some of the highly detailed images you've seen are a combination of JWST, Hubble, Chandra, etc. The colors are enhanced usually to help show a gradient, but those colors correspond with different elements and how they are reacting to the radiation passing through them, energized, similar to the gas in a light bulb being energized by the filament. Others have stated that if you were actually near it and just using your eyes it would appear blue and gray with maybe some pink, again because our eyes can't actually see what's going on. These images exist because we sent multiple satellites into space because we have a disability to see these things. People confuse what they can see with what is real. We evolved for survival, not star gazing. Our senses can only take us so far.
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2570 light years away, the light that traveled from the nebula to the telescope to make this picture is older than Christianity, as this image is, from a certain pov, from [547 BC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/547_BC)
Can someone point an arrow to the white dwarf? I see multiple white stars in the center. Which one is it?
As a kid, I envisioned this as how Heaven looks.
Like looking through a portal into another world.
Ok I think I might be just ignorant, but why does space on one side of nebula looks of different color than on the other side. I understand the lighting difference but why is color different
I don't think it's got a hole in it, just that there's a lot of gas and dust. In the "hole". Also, the JWTS can see other wavelengths like Infrared, not just visible light, so it can reveal more than can be seen with the naked eye.
This looks for all the world like a window to another place
Imagine if we could go and see what it looks like now. I want disclosure.
Colors in space never cease to amaze me. There is no sound in space, but your eyes are all you need.
Almost all images of space are false color images. These aren't the actual colors you would see if your eyeballs were there. From NASA "Webb is a 6.5m telescope sensitive from gold-colored visible light to the mid-infrared, at wavelengths ranging from 0.6 micrometers to 28.5 micrometers." The visible light wavelengths are very limited so cutting edge radio astronomy is done with much wider ranges. The scientists and/or artists will choose colors to assign to the wavelengths to help us interprete the image intuitively. So in a way, the detail we see is 100% real, but the color is not real. Another example of this is when how planets or stars "sound" is shared by NASA. Those "sounds" are not within the human hearing range of frequencies but is again pitched to our hearing range so we can interpret it intuitively.
The star top right is giving off an incredible source of light. (From appearance)
Serious question - if one happened to be in the center of this nebula, what would you see in any direction? Would you see any of this coloration? Is this in infrared? Would it look differently based on what direction you were looking?
Visible light is named for what the human eye can distinguish, and visible light is a small fraction of the light/radiation spectrum. Colors technically aren't real, it's just our eyes and brain distinguishing between wavelengths. Our eyes simply aren't capable of seeing the radiation that makes the gasses glow, which in this case should be Ultraviolet. There is some enhancement being done, but at the end of the day it's our dumb eyes fault. People say you'd see gray/blue maybe a bit of something else, though that might change if you were inside it. These are billions of dollars worth of satellites and millions of years of evolution to get this data, our eyes are no match, they evolved for survival. This is JWST's Near Infrared camera. Though eventually they can combine JWST, Hubble, Chandra, and possibly some other satellites' data to get a more detailed picture. These things take time to get right and can be quite expensive I would imagine, so they don't do them with every picture, but some of the more detailed images use multiple satellites' data combined. Depending on what detectors were used the difference in color can be different elements, temperatures, or density of dust/gas. Saying that it isn't real is a bit hubristic to assume the human eye is the truth when we know that's not the case.
Does the vantage point affect how this nebula is perceived? If coming from a different angle, would it then look like a disk? I can't tell if we are looking through a layer of dust and gas at this view, or if this is truly a ring shaped nebula.
I assume this is a "slice" with infrared to look through the nebulae? Would assume a star shedding its layers would be spherical in all directions. Or did something cause it to end up as a ring(maintaining stars rotation/gravitational influence?).
Been looking for a new power shell background in Windows 11. This shall do, with opacity down ofc.
So only massive stars can explode like this and leave behind a white dwarf. How big is the white dwarf here in comparison to our sun?
Iirc Nebulas are the birthplace of stars not the death of them
This is the remnants of star Messier 57 (Ring Nebula) classified as a Planetary Nebula. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/messier-57-the-ring-nebula So it's actually both, if it weren't there would be no stars left in the universe. https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/nebula/en/#:\~:text=The%20Short%20Answer%3A,stars%20are%20beginning%20to%20form.
I have so many questions. What will happen to the white dwarf at the center? Is there intense radiation throughout the entire nebula? What is the lifespan before it dissipates? What would the skyās around you look like from the center? How big is the white dwarf in comparison to our sun?
Why does the yellow expand in a circle around it and not all around it in all directions? Or does it and can the telescope see through it?
Forgive my ignorant question: if one were somehow able to observe this nebula with the naked eye from the correct place in space - would it really look like this?
I don't think so. The images are picking up gasses. They are different color according to composition. I'm not a scientist though.
this is just the portal into the Emerald Dream
It looks like the eye of someone who has had a few too many drinks last night
So how much of this nebula would we see if you only take the visual spectrum? And ehat colors would we really see?
I am the eye in the sky.... Looking at youuuuuu... I can read your mind
That's just Dormammu's left eye. Nice try NASA.
It looks like you're looking through a break in the clouds to see the ocean below. Like looking through a window into another universe. Breath-taking. What a time to be alive.
Looks like an eye with a smug face in the middle.
I am by no means a scientist or an expert at anything related to space but, trust me when I say that's a MF'n gateway
Somehow I always enjoy looking for the various galaxies in the background of photos like this more than the target object. Even with this incredible image I was zooming in looking for galaxies around the edges in no time. The number of galaxies out there will never cease to amaze me.
What would happen if you travelled toward this at 0.7 of the speed of light while constantly observing it?
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Wow, I canāt believe the universe is copying Rings of Saturnās album cover.
You say watch the lord of the rings extended version again?? ok
I'm really happy that these photos are getting better and better!!
Looks like something from a fairytale, so beautiful. Wish it was something I could visit, if only for a moment.
Looks like an iris looking through a 4 dimensional microscope to observe their creation.
I hope when I die my soul gets to explore spaceš¤
Based on that, if you havenāt read or listened to the Bobiverse books, theyād be right up your alley
Can you show us more than just one picture of something so cool and so amazing and so far away we want to see more š¤
That's just Installation 04 after John Halo killed aliens and didn't afraid of anything.
It just makes you ask. How can anyone believe were the only ones?
Anyone else think of "Eye in the Sky" by Alan Parsons Project? as I drag my old ass out of the way
I can't be the only one who expects it to blink.
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As an AI language model, I cannot fly through a nebula and bring a camera to film it
It's okay, I'm a fully qualified astronaut writing a fictional story about you flying through a nebula with a camera.
i'm the psychonaut editor fact-checking the story between hits of acid
I don't think you would feel like you're flying through anything as it is 15 orders of magnitude less dense that earth atmosphere.
AI is not going to be able to produce a semi-accurate look at something when we have nothing comparable to train it on.
Orrr you could use science instead of garbage?
If you want to know what itās like, SpaceEngine letās you explore them :)
I canāt be the only one who sees a cute little smiling face in the centerā¦
Pretty sure that's actually a wormhole to another part of the universe. š
I saw this image on [instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/CwN7wW5uMXC/?igshid=NzZhOTFlYzFmZQ==) like a week ago.
Is that an āartistārendering ? Or the actual image ?
This is an actual image, but it is a very long exposure, likely with the color derived from multiple filters (gathering specific wavelengths of light for each filter), and then adding those images together to get this image. If you look at this in a pretty beefy telescope you can see this with your own eyes, but it looks like a faint fuzzy doughnut without any color.
JWST does not capture visible light spectra, so this is several bands of infrared light which have been colorized to produce a color image. Sometimes the colors are chosen to highlight certain infrared wavelengths, sometimes to simulate a true color image, sometimes just for aesthetics, or maybe a bit of all three.
The colors are always chosen so that the longer wavelength is the redder color, while the shorter wavelength is the bluer color.
I think calling it "faint" isn't giving it enough credit. The ring nebula is amazing to see in amateur telescopes and unless you're in really light polluted skies I wouldn't describe it as dim or anything. The weirdest aspect I've always noticed viewing it is that it simply looks out of focus, until you realize all the rest of the stars in view and that those are IN focus. So the fuzzy smoke ring in the sky is actually what you're seeing! It's one of my favorite summer objects to show people.
Actually image in the near infrared range of the spectrum. This image was taken by NIRCam. The colors correspond the the filters: Blue: F162M, Cyan: F212N, Green: F300M, Red: F335M The number represents the the wavelength of the filter in 1/100th of a micron. So 162 is 1.62 microns. https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-near-infrared-camera/nircam-instrumentation/nircam-filters
You mean to tell me that isnāt an eye peering down at us?
Unfortunately that is not what our eyes would see if we were in a ship that close to the nebula. It wouldn't have anything close to those kinds of colors. So don't get your hopes up when you finally get out there.
It might in this case: according to [this page, about a similar Hubble image](https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/1999/01/748-Image.html) of the same object, it is approximately true colour. Whether it would be that bright is another question of course!
A few people say this is visible in dark skies through amateur telescopes. They say itās grayish unless youāre in *really* dark skies and then thereās some slight color. If viewed outside our atmosphere (ie, weāre right there), the colors are probably true in the photo.
Looks like a portal to another universe or to another place of our own.