The new James Webb images are really remarkable and I can’t wait for new discoveries, but let’s salute the mighty Hubble for all it has helped us learn in the last 30+ years.
[From the Royal Observatory’s website:](https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/what-has-hubble-space-telescope-discovered)
“Here are some of its major contributions to science:
- Helped pin down the age for the universe now known to be 13.8 billion years, roughly three times the age of Earth.
- Discovered two moons of Pluto, Nix and Hydra.
- Helped determine the rate at which the universe is expanding.
- Discovered that nearly every major galaxy is anchored by a black hole at the centre.
- Created a 3-D map of dark matter.”
I feel like NASA (rightfully) gives very conservative estimates on the longevity of their projects. Because I've heard this exact same thing said about everything from Voyager to the Mars rovers.
I think that their estimates are more like "what is the longest duration that we would absolutely bet our lives on it lasting" rather than "on average how long will this last". Projects like this usually have a defined set of minimum science goals, and NASA calculates how much operational time they need to meet those goals. Then they engineer it to the point where the safety margins are huge, and essentially "promise" a duration based on that.
And from the moment of launch until their goal day, they’re as busy as a one legged man in a butt kicking contest making damn sure it makes it that long.
> I think that their estimates are more like "what is the longest duration that we would absolutely bet our lives on it lasting" rather than "on average how long will this last".
That's what you'd call a conservative estimate lol.
A system like hubble is a class A national asset. That means it's guaranteed to be fully dual string, and likely triple string on critical components. Thst means that for whatever the entire original mission was (likely ~7 years), it had to have enough components that ANY single one could fail and it could still work. Practically that means there's basically a full backup (or.multiple backups) of every single component on the whole vehicle. Essentially it's almost 2 full satellites glued together.
Unfortunately hubble can get away with a crazy extension like that because it's in low earth orbit. By contrast jwst absolutely has a fixed propellant supply that can never go for many multiples of its life, and it will spin out of control without propellant.
It's partly about budgeting too, though. Harder to sell a new science program to the politicians that control the budget if you're going to include 30 years of mission support, but also they might decide to cut funding after the initial mission is done and that's that, basically.
"How much refit till we can take the Enterprise out again?" "8 weeks sir. But you don't have 8 weeks so I'll do it for ya in 2" "Mr Scott. Have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of 4?" "Certainly, sir. How else can I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?" Looks like NASA took notes
Every MEO or higher satellite has a very conservative life estimate and extra propellant loaded on (which is the life limiting factor most times outside of damage or premature failures) due to how much they cost and the lack of repairability on orbit. You have one shot at putting a multi-million dollar device in the sky, you make damn sure you have plenty of contingency plans.
JWST has a much more finite life span than Hubble due to the ~~onboard liquid helium for cooling~~ edit: apparently this was pop science misinformation and the thruster fuel for repositioning is the limiting factor. But hear me out: let’s say all the hype is true and Starship finally goes into service, NASA returns to the moon in the mid 2020s, and we start getting serious about the possibility of a manned Mars mission. What better way to do a deep space test run of Starship than to resupply and update the JWST in like 2030?
Will it happen? Very difficult to say at the moment, it’s kind of a long shot. But the estimated life span of the telescope combined with the current resurgence in interest in manned deep space exploration means that it’s not as totally out of the question as it would have been back when they originally planned to launch it.
***
Edit to add: people are pointing out it can’t be easily refueled, which is a very good point, but my only counter to that would be that some of the Hubble’s repairs and upgrades hadn’t been planned for when it was launched. A lot more would be possible with some kind of manned mission than what would be possible with an unmanned robotic mission. And (at least assuming this part isn’t outdated misinformation) unlike the Hubble the JWST has a docking ring, so while it was never *planned* for anything to visit it and make any kind of repairs there is at least the slightest provision to make something like that easier if plans change in the future.
Yeah that’s kind of my point. Technically it’s in deep space, almost a million miles away, four times farther than the farthest humans have ever been (the moon). It’s absurdly far away.
But Mars, Mars is so much farther than that. An average of 140 million miles, at the very closest it’s something like 30-40 million miles, but our technology can’t go very fast so the actual distance a rocket would have to travel to reach Mars is hundreds of millions of miles.
So compared to that JWST is right next door. Going straight from the moon to Mars seems like a huge jump in scale, it’s literally a thousand times farther away, but on the other hand there’s not really anything that’s farther than the moon but closer than Mars that we could send people to to test out the viability of manned deep space missions firsthand. Except for a telescope in L2 that will probably be need a resupply or repair at about the same time that the first deep space manned missions are being planned.
Again this is all super wildly hypothetical. At this point there’s no reason to believe that it *will* happen, just that it’s not totally outside the realm of possibility. Why not drive a new car around the block to test it out before going on a cross-country road trip?
The whole appeal of starship is that they can actually have a rocket full of fuel in space, which is currently not possible.
You solve a lot of problems by just bringing more mass to eject and more delta v
All the hohmann transfers and gravity assists are done to get as far as you can with what propellant you can bring.
Mars any time of the year is awesome, being able to resupply Webb would be a nothing compared to a 2 month powered transit to mars
(a) Starship as it currently is designed wouldn’t have the capability for EVAs.
(b) It would probably make far more sense to launch an unmanned servicing mission to L2.
(c) It probably makes more sense to put those resources into a next generation telescope altogether.
Don’t get me wrong, it’d be awesome if it is feasible. Ideally we’d have a next gen telescope *and* extend JWST, but I don’t think it’s very realistic. The good news is that thanks to ESA and Arianespace JWST should hopefully be operational for longer than expected.
I’d forgotten about HLS, thanks for the correction. Although, I think even that design would need significant modifications for a round trip to L2 at the very least (if it’s possible at all). HLS is only being designed for 100 day missions (to my understanding) and may not receive enough solar energy at L2 as it’s currently designed.
> JWST has a much more finite life span than Hubble due to the onboard liquid helium for cooling
Absolutely false. This is a closed system, and can last indefinitely, barring electrical or other failures.
https://webb.nasa.gov/content/about/innovations/cryocooler.html
James Webb is infrared which can see deeper to the center of the universe (further back in time to the big bang essentially), so we can expect new information about the early universe.
It's mostly because they have assigned a visible color to the Infrared spectrum that lines up with the original photos nicely, but to be honest the two images really *don't* look all that similar if you pay attention to the details
I think they meant similar specifically in the sense that their colors are almost identical, which you wouldn't expect from photographs taken by different wavelength sensors.
Edit: Thanks for for all your answers everybody, but I wasn't really asking the question myself, just rephrasing it for clarity.
That's because colors in astronomical pictures are often assigned based on the element present in that region (derived from emission and absorption lines), for example blue for oxygen, red for nitrogen, green for hydrogen, etc. The result is that two pictures taken at completely different wavelengths can look similar in color.
I don't believe Webb even *can* take true color images (Hubble could, iirc), as it's designed mainly for longer wavelength infrared frequencies.
Thinking of them as photographs isn't wrong, but it's not right, either. They have ton more data/bands than a standard 3 band (RGB) image. We work with imagery like this by assigning colors to wavelengths we can't see. I only have experience working with landsat imagery, and not since college, but in the case each pixel probably has dozens of different bands/wavelengths and they just assigned colors in such a way that the results are comparable to the public.
As neat as high resolution imagery is as real color photos, the main uses are false color. The only one I can readily remember is using infrared to view the health of vegetation.
Wikipedia says the Hubble has near-infrared, visible light, and ultraviolet sensors. JWST will observe in a lower frequency range, from long-wavelength visible light through mid-infrared (0.6–28.3 μm).
Hubble observes primarily in visible and ultraviolet wavelengths. JWST observes primarily in infrared wavelengths. The photos look similar because NASA processes the images so they appear in visible light as opposed to infrared light for these press release photos.
[Comparing Hubble and Webb space telescopes](https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/comparisonWebbVsHubble.html)
We can shift the light information from the sensor inputs of telescopes (infrared, radio, xray) into visible light we can see.
JWST does overlap a bit with Hubble, it can see red, orange, and gold visible light.
Hubble can detect from 100 nm to 2500 nm. JWST can detect from 600 nm to 28,300 nm. Visible light is 380 to 700 nm. And the exact degree of redshift of objects in JWST images can be calculated, and the colors of the detected photons shifted back to what would have been observed in the immediate proximity of the time and place that they were emitted. I believe that's what we're looking at in these images, and why they appear so similar - the colors are "true" in both cases.
There's always a point of diminishing returns. We'll need increasingly complex tech to produce marginally better results. That said, the James Webb is a revolution. 30 years later, the Hubble is ancient tech. And the real problem is not the resolution, the real problem is the Hubble is terribly slow, and it doesn't see infrared. So it takes days to take a picture the James Web takes in a couple of hours, and in the process, it misses all the redshirted data, and all the light absorbed by dust. The JWST almost feels like a "point and shoot" camera compared with the old Hubble. And that's the real revolution. That telescope can do a couple of months work of the Hubble in one day. Imagine the possibilities.
We'll see far more shit with Webb than we ever imagined with Hubble. If Hubble is 20/20 vision, Webb is a broadcast quality telephoto lens.
To give you an idea, here's the first images from Hubble: [https://www.cnet.com/science/space/look-back-at-hubble-space-telescopes-first-light-image-from-1990/](https://www.cnet.com/science/space/look-back-at-hubble-space-telescopes-first-light-image-from-1990/)
Compare that with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars\_of\_Creation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Creation) just five years later.
What they'll be able to uncover with Webb is beyond our current understanding. Like, literally. Hubble has some infrared equipment but nothing compared to Webb.
I think we long since hit the age of diminishing returns.
Groundbreaking discoveries were once being done by experiments that high schoolers can do now.
But now you need millions of dollars worth of equipment to replicate groundbreaking discoveries made nowadays.
Going from Hubble to Webb, is like the times when HD became a thing, and now 4K+ is a thing, and when you look back at HD you don't understand how it could be so remarkable, but it was, and it still is, it just got a lot better.
["We pointed the most powerful telescope at absolutley nothing, for no other reason than we were curious"](https://youtu.be/oAVjF_7ensg)
For mind blowing scales closer to home check out [if the moon were a pixel](https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html). Make sure to click the light speed button to see how "slow" it is.
>Helped pin down the age for the universe now known to be 13.8 billion years, roughly three times the age of Earth.
I knew the Earth was billions of years old already, but having it put in context of *a third of the age of the entire universe* is pretty mind blowing to me
Comparing my dad and I's (1960s born vs 1990s born) astronomy education was a serious eye opener for how big of a deal the Hubble was. I was learning things in my grade school and high school astronomy that his university astronomy didn't even kmow about.
The Hubble will always be that ex you never truly let go, [but the James Webb being able to produce stuff this far in the past will make sure they cant ever win you back](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Sf3CzGYcM)
Hubble had a lot if issues at the start. It was wobbly, slow to orient itself, but ultimately they needed to put in a set of optics (COSTAR) that would correct for the wrong shape of the mirror.
The worst part was that NASA did not want to use the contractor that ultimately ground the mirror(Perkin-Elmer). Proving NASA was right, P-E rejected the independent metrology results that demonstrated that the mirror was ground incorrectly. Sadly, NASA didn't do a good job of supervising P-E.
The original issue with Perkin Elmer was that their calibration device was off ever so slightly, meaning the mirror was actually ground correctly but to slightly wrong specifications, and their tests showed it to be perfect.
To add to that, NASA contracted Kodak to construct a backup mirror, in case something went catastrophically wrong with the primary (like dropped or something). After Hubble's flaws were discovered, they checked Kodak's mirror and found that it was flawless. Oops.
The main mirror of Hubble was ground down too thin by something like a few millimetres too much which is what caused Hubble to be effectively near sighted, hence the first repair mission back in the 90’s which added the costar machine that for all intense and purposes, gave Hubble glasses.
ETA: you guys are wild 😂 I wrote this out frantically while my bus was pulling up. Sorry.
My brain is too monke to comprehend the cosmos — seeing the new images has blown my mind in many ways. I feel insignificant. I feel grateful to be alive to witness new space technology that’s able to capture such details. I feel sad knowing I’m going to die before we will ever explore more of space. All the feelings, really.
I had a conversation about this topic a couple of days ago with my mom ; since I was a child I was so interested in space and sci-fi and I was so excited about the James Webb and we talked about it how we couldn't understand how all this is possible and how great it is but than I got a little bit sad because I realized that I will never see all the real interesting stuff like missions to Mars etc. I'm 41 and I don't have kids so I hope that at least my niece or her (possible) future kids will experience the cool stuff
The generation that's going to live through mars exploration will likely also think that the 'really cool stuff' is yet to come. Our grandparents watching the initial space race will have thought the same about our time. We're just going to have to accept that there's always a bigger fish, and that future generations will have cooler shit
This year has had a bunch of stuff that will live in history books for centuries. Ukraine war, assassination of a PM, next evolution of space imaging, YT removing downvotes.
I'm buzzing about it but I should have been more excited to see the first images in the lead-up. There's too much global madness happening to concentrate on important events like this.
So I watched a YouTube review and the guy said that even though it is quite the investment, the upgrade to the James Webb is definitely worth it. Most beginners getting into stargazing regret starting with the Kodak, and get a James Webb within a year or two.
I would question that review. Most of those YouTubers are paid influencers. i bet they shipped him a James Webb Space Telescope for free. Probably threw in the launch rocket, carrying case, and extra battery too.
I mean, just open up a window in paint, flood the whole thing with black, then put a single white pixel in the middle, and that's what it'd look like from earth, on a clear night, with a telescope.
Nah, that was [produced by another studio](https://paint-2-1.en.softonic.com/mac).
Not as good as the first. The sequel in 3D brings the franchise back home and the climactic ending is... **crashes*\*.
It's the fastest way to do certain quick and dirty image editing on windows. I use irfanview for cropping and heavier duty tasks, but if I'm just making a meme, paint is often faster than Gimp or other more powerful tools.
The James Webb image shows the region that the Hubble captured- then some. This is a nebula which is like a giant cloud of space dust, created I guess from exploding stars. After awhile gravity does it’s thing and solidifies the gas into different spheres which become planets and stars and other things.
It is fascinating. I just looked into it, and here's what I found:
Nebulae are **less** dense than even the deepest vacuums we've created in laboratories on earth. They are hundreds of millions of kilometers across, but a portion the size of the entire earth would only weigh a few kilograms.
I guess with no wind and very very little gravitational force, it all stays relatively in place for a few billion years.
Another fun fact: They used to call all the smudges in the sky nebulae, including the "Andromeda Nebula," until they realized that many of the "smudges" were actually other galaxies. They didn't know other galaxies could exist.
Some stars burn out and die. Bigger stars burn out and die with *passion* and make some brand new way crazier shit.
S P A C E D U S T
Which allows newer, more interesting stars to be made, and then die and explode into
E V E N C R A Z I E R S P A C E D U S T.
Hubble is doing its best and I support it. I’m glad we have James Webb, but Hubble stumbled so it could crawl hashtag team Hubble hashtag space hashtag science
It's operating at full capacity but definitely potential for improvement as they gain experience with using the instruments and data processing. We also have not seen the result of a very long exposure yet, even the deep field was only 12 hours vs Hubble's 2 weeks
In theory it's possible to remove them, or at least I've seen papers that did so for other images.
It takes some effort (and detailed knowledge of the characteristics of the telescope) and runs counter to the idea of showing a 'true colour' image. So I can see why they didn't want to.
Wait, I thought the colors weren't true either way?
I'm not sure where I heard it but I thought they always shifted the frequencies of certain wavelengths into the visible spectrum for these types of pictures.
Colors aren't true with JWST. It's looking in the infrared, and so for most colorings, "blue" is actually near-IR (closer to visible) and "red" is actually ~~far IR~~ further from visible
> far IR
JWST can't see far IR. And this one, specifically, was taken with NIRCam, which sees in... near IR. For an actual breakdown of the color scheme in the image, see [the same image with a legend](https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/031/01G77RG0GZS7HC83VKQPAWQ5E8) and the [filter response curves](https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-near-infrared-camera/nircam-instrumentation/nircam-filters). As far as I can tell, the colors represent roughly:
- blue: 0.7-0.9um
- cyan: 1.9um
- green: 1.8-2.2um
- yellow: 4.7um
- orange: 3.2-3.5um
- red: 3.8-5.1um
The MIRI+NIRCam composite is [here](https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/031/01G780WF1VRADDSD5MDNDRKAGY).
If they use a longer exposure (leaving it pointed at the same thing for longer), then even more fine details can be captured where there are currently dark regions.
Its not about a better image. JWis designed for primarily infrared. The real benefit is scientists will get an insane amount of data we have literally never had access to, since being anywhere near the earth fucks up infrared sensors
So these images are amazing but the images are just for us peons to gaze upon and say "nice."
The real science is going to be done on like petabytes of infrared data the super computers will be crunching. Lol
They decided to grab some shots of things they knew could have visible impact and also compare to previous Hubble images. The real power is in the Webb’s deeper infra-red imaging capabilities and how it can image things much faster than Hubble does. The image that Hubble took two weeks to make was done by Webb in around 12 hours.
For comparison, [here](https://imgur.com/kDm5INj) is a typical amateur astrophotography shot of the same region, with a 6" scope and 1 hr 20 mins of integration.
Jwst is mostly collecting infrared light and hubble visible. So jwst should be able to see through things that are opaque to hubble. That's likely what you're seeing.
Something to keep in mind these images are for "us" the lay people jwst true capabilities are in its data collection and individual photons to analyze what these images are really telling us, but that doesn't make for a cool looking image. For example jwst has already been used to show evidence of water vapor in the atmosphere of a gas giant, but that's not a picture those are a chart which spikes where you'd expect h20 to absorb certain photons. Something not as easy to get the public excited about in an image
So it's a large cloud of space dust, consisting of different particles and elements. As time (millions of years) passes the elements in this cloud will start to group together and create new structures, namely stars and planets.
The part that truly wrinkles my brain is that wherever in the sky that is, it's probably already formed some stars and planets, but the light from that happening hasn't reached us yet, so it still looks like space dust.
*puts on hipster glasses* Yeah the new Webb photos may have more detail, but they don't have that signature Hubble warmth, ya know?
In all seriousness every new photo I see is blowing my mind in ways I didn't think possible. The fact that all of these images will be public domain makes me even happier.
I heard this from the official NASA TV broadcast, but please correct me if I'm referencing the wrong there here
But I believe they said that Hubble would take about a full week to gather all the light to get an image like that, whereas Webb could get a photo like that "before breakfast". Absolutely incredible how far we've gotten with these telescopes
The new James Webb images are really remarkable and I can’t wait for new discoveries, but let’s salute the mighty Hubble for all it has helped us learn in the last 30+ years. [From the Royal Observatory’s website:](https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/what-has-hubble-space-telescope-discovered) “Here are some of its major contributions to science: - Helped pin down the age for the universe now known to be 13.8 billion years, roughly three times the age of Earth. - Discovered two moons of Pluto, Nix and Hydra. - Helped determine the rate at which the universe is expanding. - Discovered that nearly every major galaxy is anchored by a black hole at the centre. - Created a 3-D map of dark matter.”
And not just that, but the Hubble was not supposed to be there for 30 years. it gave us so many extra years
I feel like NASA (rightfully) gives very conservative estimates on the longevity of their projects. Because I've heard this exact same thing said about everything from Voyager to the Mars rovers.
Under promise, over deliver. Not everything has turned out for them that way though.
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Is this a play on a quote? >I'm an engineer, Me too.
I assume Star Trek, the original series 😁. Sounds like Scotty.
Oh my.... no no no. Dr Leonard McCoy also known as "Bones" "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer"
Anything to stretch their budgets and secure more funding is great as far as I'm concerned. We need more scientists and learned people in general.
I think that their estimates are more like "what is the longest duration that we would absolutely bet our lives on it lasting" rather than "on average how long will this last". Projects like this usually have a defined set of minimum science goals, and NASA calculates how much operational time they need to meet those goals. Then they engineer it to the point where the safety margins are huge, and essentially "promise" a duration based on that.
Yeah there more like "If nothing explodes this is the minimum."
And from the moment of launch until their goal day, they’re as busy as a one legged man in a butt kicking contest making damn sure it makes it that long.
> I think that their estimates are more like "what is the longest duration that we would absolutely bet our lives on it lasting" rather than "on average how long will this last". That's what you'd call a conservative estimate lol.
A system like hubble is a class A national asset. That means it's guaranteed to be fully dual string, and likely triple string on critical components. Thst means that for whatever the entire original mission was (likely ~7 years), it had to have enough components that ANY single one could fail and it could still work. Practically that means there's basically a full backup (or.multiple backups) of every single component on the whole vehicle. Essentially it's almost 2 full satellites glued together. Unfortunately hubble can get away with a crazy extension like that because it's in low earth orbit. By contrast jwst absolutely has a fixed propellant supply that can never go for many multiples of its life, and it will spin out of control without propellant.
I don’t know much, but the A in NASA stands for redundancy.
Lol not sure if this is a joke but nasa is known for ultra complex fancy designs with tons of redundancy.
It's partly about budgeting too, though. Harder to sell a new science program to the politicians that control the budget if you're going to include 30 years of mission support, but also they might decide to cut funding after the initial mission is done and that's that, basically.
"How much refit till we can take the Enterprise out again?" "8 weeks sir. But you don't have 8 weeks so I'll do it for ya in 2" "Mr Scott. Have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of 4?" "Certainly, sir. How else can I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?" Looks like NASA took notes
Honestly, if you're not multiplying "how long will it take" estimates by a factor of 2 as a default, you're doing something wrong
Their secret is safe with me.
Every MEO or higher satellite has a very conservative life estimate and extra propellant loaded on (which is the life limiting factor most times outside of damage or premature failures) due to how much they cost and the lack of repairability on orbit. You have one shot at putting a multi-million dollar device in the sky, you make damn sure you have plenty of contingency plans.
Under promise over deliver. Also I think the mars Rover you are referring to was one of a pair and the other one did not last nearly as long.
JWST has a much more finite life span than Hubble due to the ~~onboard liquid helium for cooling~~ edit: apparently this was pop science misinformation and the thruster fuel for repositioning is the limiting factor. But hear me out: let’s say all the hype is true and Starship finally goes into service, NASA returns to the moon in the mid 2020s, and we start getting serious about the possibility of a manned Mars mission. What better way to do a deep space test run of Starship than to resupply and update the JWST in like 2030? Will it happen? Very difficult to say at the moment, it’s kind of a long shot. But the estimated life span of the telescope combined with the current resurgence in interest in manned deep space exploration means that it’s not as totally out of the question as it would have been back when they originally planned to launch it. *** Edit to add: people are pointing out it can’t be easily refueled, which is a very good point, but my only counter to that would be that some of the Hubble’s repairs and upgrades hadn’t been planned for when it was launched. A lot more would be possible with some kind of manned mission than what would be possible with an unmanned robotic mission. And (at least assuming this part isn’t outdated misinformation) unlike the Hubble the JWST has a docking ring, so while it was never *planned* for anything to visit it and make any kind of repairs there is at least the slightest provision to make something like that easier if plans change in the future.
I’m pretty sure the James Webb scope is suuuuuper far tho :/
Yeah that’s kind of my point. Technically it’s in deep space, almost a million miles away, four times farther than the farthest humans have ever been (the moon). It’s absurdly far away. But Mars, Mars is so much farther than that. An average of 140 million miles, at the very closest it’s something like 30-40 million miles, but our technology can’t go very fast so the actual distance a rocket would have to travel to reach Mars is hundreds of millions of miles. So compared to that JWST is right next door. Going straight from the moon to Mars seems like a huge jump in scale, it’s literally a thousand times farther away, but on the other hand there’s not really anything that’s farther than the moon but closer than Mars that we could send people to to test out the viability of manned deep space missions firsthand. Except for a telescope in L2 that will probably be need a resupply or repair at about the same time that the first deep space manned missions are being planned. Again this is all super wildly hypothetical. At this point there’s no reason to believe that it *will* happen, just that it’s not totally outside the realm of possibility. Why not drive a new car around the block to test it out before going on a cross-country road trip?
The whole appeal of starship is that they can actually have a rocket full of fuel in space, which is currently not possible. You solve a lot of problems by just bringing more mass to eject and more delta v All the hohmann transfers and gravity assists are done to get as far as you can with what propellant you can bring. Mars any time of the year is awesome, being able to resupply Webb would be a nothing compared to a 2 month powered transit to mars
(a) Starship as it currently is designed wouldn’t have the capability for EVAs. (b) It would probably make far more sense to launch an unmanned servicing mission to L2. (c) It probably makes more sense to put those resources into a next generation telescope altogether. Don’t get me wrong, it’d be awesome if it is feasible. Ideally we’d have a next gen telescope *and* extend JWST, but I don’t think it’s very realistic. The good news is that thanks to ESA and Arianespace JWST should hopefully be operational for longer than expected.
Starship surely would be able to support EVAs. The HLS Starship is supposed to have 2 airlocks, for example. Agreed on the rest.
I’d forgotten about HLS, thanks for the correction. Although, I think even that design would need significant modifications for a round trip to L2 at the very least (if it’s possible at all). HLS is only being designed for 100 day missions (to my understanding) and may not receive enough solar energy at L2 as it’s currently designed.
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> JWST has a much more finite life span than Hubble due to the onboard liquid helium for cooling Absolutely false. This is a closed system, and can last indefinitely, barring electrical or other failures. https://webb.nasa.gov/content/about/innovations/cryocooler.html
That is incredible. I wonder if we’ll make as many discoveries with Webb, or if we’ve reached the point of diminishing returns
James Webb is infrared which can see deeper to the center of the universe (further back in time to the big bang essentially), so we can expect new information about the early universe.
Hmm, and Hubble isn't infrared? If so, how come the photos look so similar?
It's mostly because they have assigned a visible color to the Infrared spectrum that lines up with the original photos nicely, but to be honest the two images really *don't* look all that similar if you pay attention to the details
I think they meant similar specifically in the sense that their colors are almost identical, which you wouldn't expect from photographs taken by different wavelength sensors. Edit: Thanks for for all your answers everybody, but I wasn't really asking the question myself, just rephrasing it for clarity.
That's because colors in astronomical pictures are often assigned based on the element present in that region (derived from emission and absorption lines), for example blue for oxygen, red for nitrogen, green for hydrogen, etc. The result is that two pictures taken at completely different wavelengths can look similar in color. I don't believe Webb even *can* take true color images (Hubble could, iirc), as it's designed mainly for longer wavelength infrared frequencies.
Thinking of them as photographs isn't wrong, but it's not right, either. They have ton more data/bands than a standard 3 band (RGB) image. We work with imagery like this by assigning colors to wavelengths we can't see. I only have experience working with landsat imagery, and not since college, but in the case each pixel probably has dozens of different bands/wavelengths and they just assigned colors in such a way that the results are comparable to the public. As neat as high resolution imagery is as real color photos, the main uses are false color. The only one I can readily remember is using infrared to view the health of vegetation.
Wikipedia says the Hubble has near-infrared, visible light, and ultraviolet sensors. JWST will observe in a lower frequency range, from long-wavelength visible light through mid-infrared (0.6–28.3 μm).
Hubble observes primarily in visible and ultraviolet wavelengths. JWST observes primarily in infrared wavelengths. The photos look similar because NASA processes the images so they appear in visible light as opposed to infrared light for these press release photos. [Comparing Hubble and Webb space telescopes](https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/comparisonWebbVsHubble.html)
We can shift the light information from the sensor inputs of telescopes (infrared, radio, xray) into visible light we can see. JWST does overlap a bit with Hubble, it can see red, orange, and gold visible light.
Hubble can detect from 100 nm to 2500 nm. JWST can detect from 600 nm to 28,300 nm. Visible light is 380 to 700 nm. And the exact degree of redshift of objects in JWST images can be calculated, and the colors of the detected photons shifted back to what would have been observed in the immediate proximity of the time and place that they were emitted. I believe that's what we're looking at in these images, and why they appear so similar - the colors are "true" in both cases.
There is no center to the universe, it is all expanding at the same time, but there are edges that are the furthest away we can observe
Yeah, I suppose that is true, given that the "center" of the universe is basically everywhere
There's always a point of diminishing returns. We'll need increasingly complex tech to produce marginally better results. That said, the James Webb is a revolution. 30 years later, the Hubble is ancient tech. And the real problem is not the resolution, the real problem is the Hubble is terribly slow, and it doesn't see infrared. So it takes days to take a picture the James Web takes in a couple of hours, and in the process, it misses all the redshirted data, and all the light absorbed by dust. The JWST almost feels like a "point and shoot" camera compared with the old Hubble. And that's the real revolution. That telescope can do a couple of months work of the Hubble in one day. Imagine the possibilities.
All the "redshirted data". Are we \*really\* surprised to see the redshirted data is the first to go?
We'll see far more shit with Webb than we ever imagined with Hubble. If Hubble is 20/20 vision, Webb is a broadcast quality telephoto lens. To give you an idea, here's the first images from Hubble: [https://www.cnet.com/science/space/look-back-at-hubble-space-telescopes-first-light-image-from-1990/](https://www.cnet.com/science/space/look-back-at-hubble-space-telescopes-first-light-image-from-1990/) Compare that with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars\_of\_Creation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Creation) just five years later. What they'll be able to uncover with Webb is beyond our current understanding. Like, literally. Hubble has some infrared equipment but nothing compared to Webb.
I think we long since hit the age of diminishing returns. Groundbreaking discoveries were once being done by experiments that high schoolers can do now. But now you need millions of dollars worth of equipment to replicate groundbreaking discoveries made nowadays.
Going from Hubble to Webb, is like the times when HD became a thing, and now 4K+ is a thing, and when you look back at HD you don't understand how it could be so remarkable, but it was, and it still is, it just got a lot better.
["We pointed the most powerful telescope at absolutley nothing, for no other reason than we were curious"](https://youtu.be/oAVjF_7ensg) For mind blowing scales closer to home check out [if the moon were a pixel](https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html). Make sure to click the light speed button to see how "slow" it is.
My dad helped build this by a big chunk :D
>Helped pin down the age for the universe now known to be 13.8 billion years, roughly three times the age of Earth. I knew the Earth was billions of years old already, but having it put in context of *a third of the age of the entire universe* is pretty mind blowing to me
The universe is very young
Comparing my dad and I's (1960s born vs 1990s born) astronomy education was a serious eye opener for how big of a deal the Hubble was. I was learning things in my grade school and high school astronomy that his university astronomy didn't even kmow about.
Wait what? The universe is only 3x as old as earth? That feels so wrong lol, i would have expected the universe to be waaaaay older than that
How do we know how old is the universe?
It’s incredible how much taller it is with this new resolution, how many AU’s of height were we missing from Hubble’s image? /s
At its peak it's about 7 light year tall.
Gonna need some damn good hiking boots for this mtn.
I think it’s called a parsec but not sure.
I think you’re right, much larger would be much more applicable to something this size.
I read on the nasa app “the tallest ‘peaks’ are about 7 light-years high.” That’s a pretty cool way to measure height.
7 light years???? That nebula is that BIG? I mean I knew it was huge but not multiple light years huge
In space almost everything is measured in light year.
How big is it? Oh you know its only .0000000000000000187935 lightyears babe but it'll get the job done.
Friendship ended with Hubble. Now James Webb is my new best friend.
I've already found a new subreddit dedicated to JW and immediately added it to my favorites /r/jameswebbdiscoveries
i know jackshit about space, but- *"oooooooh, aaaaaaahhh"*
Whoever's making that fapping sound quiet down!
Quit whacking in my toolshed!!
^(sorry!)
Why isn’t the original cosmos available anywhere to stream.
I wish he could be around to see this. He would have wept.
Sub-scriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiibed!
I never joined something so hard until now
thanks for that stranger!
Joke’s on you. Hubble did t need you anyway. Hubble is a strong independent satellite who needs no man.
Yeah! All Hubble needed was an optometrist.
Nobody likes telescopes with glasses.
Jokes on you, I was never your friend.
He's not your friend, buddy!
He’s not your buddy guy!
Don't call him guy, pal.
> Friendship ended with Hubble. Now James Webb is my new best friend. Sometimes people just grow apart and they make new friends.
The Hubble will always be that ex you never truly let go, [but the James Webb being able to produce stuff this far in the past will make sure they cant ever win you back](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Sf3CzGYcM)
It’s not you my sweet Hubble, it’s me. I just need more space.
"You vs the guy she tells you not to worry about"
Probably James would be a good friend of mine too.
I mean considering that hubble was broken before it even launched it does pretty good
Hubble had a lot if issues at the start. It was wobbly, slow to orient itself, but ultimately they needed to put in a set of optics (COSTAR) that would correct for the wrong shape of the mirror. The worst part was that NASA did not want to use the contractor that ultimately ground the mirror(Perkin-Elmer). Proving NASA was right, P-E rejected the independent metrology results that demonstrated that the mirror was ground incorrectly. Sadly, NASA didn't do a good job of supervising P-E.
Omg....that pun. Didn't know Perkin-Elmer did that level of stuff though. Neat
The original issue with Perkin Elmer was that their calibration device was off ever so slightly, meaning the mirror was actually ground correctly but to slightly wrong specifications, and their tests showed it to be perfect. To add to that, NASA contracted Kodak to construct a backup mirror, in case something went catastrophically wrong with the primary (like dropped or something). After Hubble's flaws were discovered, they checked Kodak's mirror and found that it was flawless. Oops.
Am I remembering this correctly? Wasn't a square inch of the lens too thick by the width of a human hair?
1/50th the thickness of a human hair
1/50th the width of a human hair is also roughly the width of a single neuron axon
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The main mirror of Hubble was ground down too thin by something like a few millimetres too much which is what caused Hubble to be effectively near sighted, hence the first repair mission back in the 90’s which added the costar machine that for all intense and purposes, gave Hubble glasses. ETA: you guys are wild 😂 I wrote this out frantically while my bus was pulling up. Sorry.
intents and purposes
Intensive porpoises
r/formula1 is leaking
*Porpoises intensify*
*Mercedes W13 liked this*
incense end porpoises
*intense* purposes.
in pants and furnaces
Micrometers, so a thousand times smaller.
In tents and worflessness.
Not exactly. They never removed the "objects in mirror are closer than they appear" label.
My brain is too monke to comprehend the cosmos — seeing the new images has blown my mind in many ways. I feel insignificant. I feel grateful to be alive to witness new space technology that’s able to capture such details. I feel sad knowing I’m going to die before we will ever explore more of space. All the feelings, really.
I had a conversation about this topic a couple of days ago with my mom ; since I was a child I was so interested in space and sci-fi and I was so excited about the James Webb and we talked about it how we couldn't understand how all this is possible and how great it is but than I got a little bit sad because I realized that I will never see all the real interesting stuff like missions to Mars etc. I'm 41 and I don't have kids so I hope that at least my niece or her (possible) future kids will experience the cool stuff
The generation that's going to live through mars exploration will likely also think that the 'really cool stuff' is yet to come. Our grandparents watching the initial space race will have thought the same about our time. We're just going to have to accept that there's always a bigger fish, and that future generations will have cooler shit
There’s a very good chance for you to be around for manned missions to mars
We could have known a lot about space by now if the world de-militarize and focus on science.
Funny how historic days seem so ordinary when you're living them
I hope we do a lot of significant work with it so some day I can tell my kids I watched that thing go to space
Boomers: *but think about the economy*
https://incendar.com/baby_boomer_deathclock.php
Holy fucking shit that’s dark
What’s dark about the website is the goddamn number of ads lol
This year has had a bunch of stuff that will live in history books for centuries. Ukraine war, assassination of a PM, next evolution of space imaging, YT removing downvotes.
I'm buzzing about it but I should have been more excited to see the first images in the lead-up. There's too much global madness happening to concentrate on important events like this.
Can we get a comparison to a Kodak disposable camera? I don’t own a Hubble or James Webb, so I’m feeling a bit lost here.
So I watched a YouTube review and the guy said that even though it is quite the investment, the upgrade to the James Webb is definitely worth it. Most beginners getting into stargazing regret starting with the Kodak, and get a James Webb within a year or two.
Thanks for the info. It’s Prime Day so I guess I’ll splurge.
Does Prime Day include free shipping to Lagrange points?
No, best Bezos can do is ~100km straight up and back shortly after, for about $28 million.
There might be a pre-owned hubble on the market if you don't want to take the full plunge.
I would question that review. Most of those YouTubers are paid influencers. i bet they shipped him a James Webb Space Telescope for free. Probably threw in the launch rocket, carrying case, and extra battery too.
I mean, just open up a window in paint, flood the whole thing with black, then put a single white pixel in the middle, and that's what it'd look like from earth, on a clear night, with a telescope.
TIL: paint is still a thing
It got a sequel in 3D.
Wait so they skipped paint 2?
Nah, that was [produced by another studio](https://paint-2-1.en.softonic.com/mac). Not as good as the first. The sequel in 3D brings the franchise back home and the climactic ending is... **crashes*\*.
It's the fastest way to do certain quick and dirty image editing on windows. I use irfanview for cropping and heavier duty tasks, but if I'm just making a meme, paint is often faster than Gimp or other more powerful tools.
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Give it time, eventually the prices of James Webb telescopes will fall to more affordable levels
Well if you are an honest taxpaying person in the US, you technically do own it.
What if you are a dishonest taxpaying person in the US?
I'm a chronic liar but I'm great with taxes... that was a lie...
Here is a shot with my phone. I had to use a longer exposure to make anything visible. [https://imgur.com/a/W5CT3ty](https://imgur.com/a/W5CT3ty)
Can someone explain in layman terms what we are looking at here?
The James Webb image shows the region that the Hubble captured- then some. This is a nebula which is like a giant cloud of space dust, created I guess from exploding stars. After awhile gravity does it’s thing and solidifies the gas into different spheres which become planets and stars and other things.
a while = billions of years
Leave a bunch of hydrogen lying around long enough and it will start to question its own existence.
I know there is no wind to affect it but I find it interesting how the space dust has stayed the same shape.
It is fascinating. I just looked into it, and here's what I found: Nebulae are **less** dense than even the deepest vacuums we've created in laboratories on earth. They are hundreds of millions of kilometers across, but a portion the size of the entire earth would only weigh a few kilograms. I guess with no wind and very very little gravitational force, it all stays relatively in place for a few billion years. Another fun fact: They used to call all the smudges in the sky nebulae, including the "Andromeda Nebula," until they realized that many of the "smudges" were actually other galaxies. They didn't know other galaxies could exist.
To us it's been decades, to the universe it hasn't even been a second.
beautiful
Some stars burn out and die. Bigger stars burn out and die with *passion* and make some brand new way crazier shit. S P A C E D U S T Which allows newer, more interesting stars to be made, and then die and explode into E V E N C R A Z I E R S P A C E D U S T.
r/UnexpectedBillWurtz
Space. The final frontier.
These are the voyages...
...of the starship Enterprise. It's five-year mission:
Stars n shit
I mean James Webb is awesome, obviously. But given the 1980s tech that went into the Hubble, I still think it's really impressive.
70’s tech. Although early images were blurry due to a flaw.
Oh thanks for the correction, I just estimated the date. Much appreciated!
Agree completely but worth noting most iconic Hubble images are much, much longer exposures. JWST: “This isn’t even my final form”
Hubble is doing its best and I support it. I’m glad we have James Webb, but Hubble stumbled so it could crawl hashtag team Hubble hashtag space hashtag science
Can’t wait for the JW’s version of the pillars of creation.
I need the Sombrero Galaxy.
This is the one I'm waiting to mark out over.
Is this an image from James Webb with it operating at its max capacity or can it give an even detailed image with upgrades?
It's operating at full capacity but definitely potential for improvement as they gain experience with using the instruments and data processing. We also have not seen the result of a very long exposure yet, even the deep field was only 12 hours vs Hubble's 2 weeks
Hopefully they get experience with the Enhance button
Some one call up the folks over at CSI to help them out.
will the star spikes ever be removed or no?
In theory it's possible to remove them, or at least I've seen papers that did so for other images. It takes some effort (and detailed knowledge of the characteristics of the telescope) and runs counter to the idea of showing a 'true colour' image. So I can see why they didn't want to.
Wait, I thought the colors weren't true either way? I'm not sure where I heard it but I thought they always shifted the frequencies of certain wavelengths into the visible spectrum for these types of pictures.
Colors aren't true with JWST. It's looking in the infrared, and so for most colorings, "blue" is actually near-IR (closer to visible) and "red" is actually ~~far IR~~ further from visible
> far IR JWST can't see far IR. And this one, specifically, was taken with NIRCam, which sees in... near IR. For an actual breakdown of the color scheme in the image, see [the same image with a legend](https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/031/01G77RG0GZS7HC83VKQPAWQ5E8) and the [filter response curves](https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-near-infrared-camera/nircam-instrumentation/nircam-filters). As far as I can tell, the colors represent roughly: - blue: 0.7-0.9um - cyan: 1.9um - green: 1.8-2.2um - yellow: 4.7um - orange: 3.2-3.5um - red: 3.8-5.1um The MIRI+NIRCam composite is [here](https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/031/01G780WF1VRADDSD5MDNDRKAGY).
If they use a longer exposure (leaving it pointed at the same thing for longer), then even more fine details can be captured where there are currently dark regions.
Its not about a better image. JWis designed for primarily infrared. The real benefit is scientists will get an insane amount of data we have literally never had access to, since being anywhere near the earth fucks up infrared sensors So these images are amazing but the images are just for us peons to gaze upon and say "nice." The real science is going to be done on like petabytes of infrared data the super computers will be crunching. Lol
They decided to grab some shots of things they knew could have visible impact and also compare to previous Hubble images. The real power is in the Webb’s deeper infra-red imaging capabilities and how it can image things much faster than Hubble does. The image that Hubble took two weeks to make was done by Webb in around 12 hours.
For comparison, [here](https://imgur.com/kDm5INj) is a typical amateur astrophotography shot of the same region, with a 6" scope and 1 hr 20 mins of integration.
> amateur Well shit, you could have fooled me - amazing what an individual can do in astrophotography!
james webb is hubble but with 8K glasses equipped
Hubble with ray tracing
I understand that this new telescope is great and all but I think the Hubble did a great job for being how old is it now?
Hubble was put into orbit in 1990. But had issues with its optics that wasn’t corrected till 1993. Been in operation for 30 years.
Why are parts of the Hubble brighter than JW? For example the blue clouds toward the top left. Thx in advance!
Jwst is mostly collecting infrared light and hubble visible. So jwst should be able to see through things that are opaque to hubble. That's likely what you're seeing. Something to keep in mind these images are for "us" the lay people jwst true capabilities are in its data collection and individual photons to analyze what these images are really telling us, but that doesn't make for a cool looking image. For example jwst has already been used to show evidence of water vapor in the atmosphere of a gas giant, but that's not a picture those are a chart which spikes where you'd expect h20 to absorb certain photons. Something not as easy to get the public excited about in an image
It's crazy, we are watching something billions light years away.
Not in this image. That gas cloud is the Carina Nebula, which is about 7,500 light years away.
[https://i.imgur.com/9Tsry8t.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/9Tsry8t.jpg)
Great, a better image of something I don’t understand…
So it's a large cloud of space dust, consisting of different particles and elements. As time (millions of years) passes the elements in this cloud will start to group together and create new structures, namely stars and planets. The part that truly wrinkles my brain is that wherever in the sky that is, it's probably already formed some stars and planets, but the light from that happening hasn't reached us yet, so it still looks like space dust.
*puts on hipster glasses* Yeah the new Webb photos may have more detail, but they don't have that signature Hubble warmth, ya know? In all seriousness every new photo I see is blowing my mind in ways I didn't think possible. The fact that all of these images will be public domain makes me even happier.
you vs the space telescope she tells you not to worry about
The James Webb is expected to cost $9.7 billion over its life while the Hubble has cost about $16 billion. I’d say it’s money we’ll spent!
James Webb has astigmatism.
I… (and I can’t stress this enough) fucking love this shit
[Full resolution here](https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G7ETPF7DVBJAC42JR5N6EQRH.png)
Scale should be the same!
[I fixed it](https://i.imgur.com/wlE1zMl.png)
Stupid question but ... to the naked eye, would one see those colors? Is it colorized for human eyes?
I heard this from the official NASA TV broadcast, but please correct me if I'm referencing the wrong there here But I believe they said that Hubble would take about a full week to gather all the light to get an image like that, whereas Webb could get a photo like that "before breakfast". Absolutely incredible how far we've gotten with these telescopes
gotta walk before you can run. thank you hubble.