Coffee House Musing - Webb, Hubble and Other Space Based Observatories

What you're really preaching is, "Viva ignorance!"(I would love to point out the stupidity in your posts but I am trying to go off topic a little less often.)

NASA’s NEOWISE Space Telescope Takes 12-Year Time-Lapse Movie of Entire Sky

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NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or NEOWISE, spacecraft completes one trip halfway around the Sun every six months, taking images in all directions. Once stitched together, those images form an “all-sky” map showing the location and brightness of hundreds of millions of objects. Using 18 all-sky maps produced by the spacecraft (with the 19th and 20th to be released in March 2023), astronomers have constructed what is essentially a time-lapse movie of the sky, revealing changes that span a decade.

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NEOWISE was originally a data processing project to retrieve asteroid detections and characteristics from WISE – an observatory launched in 2009 and tasked with scanning the entire sky to find and study objects outside our solar system. Cryogenically cooled detectors in the spacecraft were sensitive to infrared light.

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Infrared light is not visible to the human eye. It is radiated by a plethora of cosmic objects, including cool, nearby stars and some of the most luminous galaxies in the universe. The WISE mission ended in 2011 after the onboard coolant – needed for some infrared observations – ran out, but the spacecraft and some of its infrared detectors were still functional. So in 2013, NASA repurposed it to track asteroids and other near-Earth objects, or NEOs. Both the mission and the spacecraft received a new name: NEOWISE.

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Growing Wiser

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Despite the mission shift, the infrared telescope has continued to scan the sky every six months. Astronomers have continued to use the data to study objects outside of our solar system.

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For example, in 2020, researchers released the second iteration of a project called CatWISE: a catalog of objects from 12 NEOWISE all-sky maps. Astronomers use the catalog to study brown dwarfs, a population of objects found throughout the galaxy and lurking in the darkness close to our Sun. Although brown dwarfs form like stars, they don’t accumulate enough mass to kick-start fusion, the process that causes stars to shine.

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Surprising Results From NASA’s IXPE Help Unlock the Secrets of Famous Exploded Star

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Using NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), astronomers have, for the first time, measured and mapped polarized X-rays from the remains of an exploded star. The findings come from observations of Cassiopeia A, a famous stellar remnant. The results shed new light on the nature of young supernova remnants, which accelerate particles close to the speed of light.

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Launched on December 9, 2021, IXPE, a collaboration between NASA and the Italian Space Agency, is the first satellite that can measure the polarization of X-ray light with this level of sensitivity and clarity. It was designed to discover the secrets of some of the most extreme objects in the universe – the remnants of supernova explosions, powerful particle streams spit out by feeding black holes, and more.

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All forms of light – from radio waves to gamma rays – can be polarized. Unlike the polarized sunglasses we use to cut the glare from sunlight bouncing off a wet road or windshield, IXPE’s detectors map the tracks of incoming X-ray light. Scientists can use these individual track records to figure out the polarization, which tells the story of what the X-rays went through.

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Cassiopeia A (Cas A for short) was the first object IXPE observed after it began collecting data. One of the reasons Cas A was selected is that its shock waves – like a sonic boom generated by a jet – are some of the fastest in the Milky Way. The shock waves were generated by the supernova explosion that destroyed a massive star after it collapsed. Light from the blast swept past Earth more than three hundred years ago.

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“Without IXPE, we have been missing crucial information about objects like Cas A,” said Pat Slane at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, who leads the IXPE investigations of supernova remnants. “This result is teaching us about a fundamental aspect of the debris from this exploded star – the behavior of its magnetic fields.”

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Strange Long-Lasting Pulse of High-Energy Radiation Swept Over Earth

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NASA’s Swift and Fermi Missions Detect Exceptional Cosmic Blast

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An unusually bright and long-lasting pulse of high-energy radiation swept over Earth Sunday, October 9, captivating astronomers around the world. The intense emission came from a gamma-ray burst (GRB) – the most powerful class of explosions in the universe – that ranks among the most luminous events known.

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A week ago, on Sunday morning Eastern time, a wave of X-rays and gamma rays passed through the solar system. It triggered detectors aboard NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, and Wind spacecraft, as well as others. Around the world, telescopes were turned to the site to study the aftermath, and new observations continue.

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Called GRB 221009A, the explosion provided an unexpectedly exciting start to the 10th Fermi Symposium, a gathering of gamma-ray astronomers now underway in Johannesburg, South Africa. “It’s safe to say this meeting really kicked off with a bang – everyone’s talking about this,” said Judy Racusin, a Fermi deputy project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who is attending the conference.

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Originating from the direction of the constellation Sagitta, the signal traveled an estimated 1.9 billion years to reach Earth. Many astronomers believe it represents the birth cry of a new black hole, one that formed in the heart of a massive star collapsing under its own weight. In these circumstances, a developing black hole drives powerful jets of particles traveling near the speed of light. The energetic jets pierce through the star, emitting X-rays and gamma rays as they stream into space.

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The burst also provided a long-awaited inaugural observing opportunity for a link between two experiments on the International Space Station (ISS) – NASA’s NICER X-ray telescope and a Japanese detector called the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI). Activated in April, the connection is dubbed the Orbiting High-energy Monitor Alert Network (OHMAN). It allows NICER to rapidly turn to outbursts detected by MAXI, actions that previously required intervention by scientists on the ground.

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“OHMAN provided an automated alert that enabled NICER to follow up within three hours, as soon as the source became visible to the telescope,” said Zaven Arzoumanian, the NICER science lead at Goddard. “Future opportunities could result in response times of a few minutes.”

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Theodoric notes: yes, and if you look at my picture in Message 317, together with Percy's posted JWST picture just above it in the old thread, you also see it clearly.

I think we are a bit lucky to witness what seems like a golden age of astronomy. It's hard to imagine that we will see as great of a leap in technology in the future as we are seeing now. We seemed to have crossed this threshold in compute power and imaging technology that allowed us to make a big step forward. I suspect we will only see incremental changes from here on out, which is nothing to sneeze at, don't get me wrong. However, imaging the first black hole and first planet in another solar system can only happen once.With JWST it feels a bit like the LHC. How much bigger do we have to go to get a significant improvement in observations, and is it worth it? The one exception I can think of would be gathering data on Earth sized planets which would need a big boost in resolution and sensitivity over the JWST.

The December issue of Scientific American has a large section on JWST. The observatory is producing some stunning images and it is interesting seeing comparison with Hubble images looking at different parts of the light spectrum. The JWST scientists are excited that they are seeing galaxies that are significantly older (further away) than those seen by any instrument before, but they are much larger and more luminous than expected and there are far more of them than expected.

Exciting times, indeed. There are few things as exciting in sciences as, "Well, that's odd". Astrophysicists now have a set of theories that they will need to adjust and improve.

And now fundies and creos will say that science sucks and can't be trusted. Now we have to explain all over again how science works.

Scientist: Why don't you trust scientists?
Fundie/creo: Because they are always changing their minds.
Scientist: What would make you trust scientists more?
Fundie/creo: If they changed their mind about creationism.

Tarantula Nebula

Carina Nebula

Cartwheel Galaxy

Neptune

Orion Nebula

Dimorphos

WR-140

Phantom Galaxy

Artist's Conception of JWST in Space

Source: James Webb telescope: Amazing images show the Universe as never before--Percy

Merry Christmas!

Nice collection. The Phantom galaxy is really impressive, as is the pic of Neptune.On a humorous note . . .Billions of tax dollars spent so I can have a killer Windows wallpaper. Money well spent.

You can't run away from God forever. Everyone must face the Judgement. Good luck with that ...

I think I would pick a better word than "luck"
Just sayin.