Astronomy & Space Exploration

Cheimoon

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What are those star shaped figures that repeat a few times (looks like a compass symbol)? There's one really big one, slightly top left of the middle.
Foreground stars of our own galaxy. The uninteresting stuff, basically. (In this picture, anyway. :) )
 

Green_Red

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These Galaxies are 13 billion light years away,the universe is 13.8 billion years and it takes 230-250 million years for one lap of the Milky Way. These Galaxies are going to be small and newly formed, the Milky Way and many other mature Galaxies are a result of galactic mergers. And the early stars were short lived also so this image is an embryonic view of the cosmos.
Yea, now I get it. Distance vs time not equivalent. So what's the difference between a year time, and a light year?
 

Frosty

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Yes I can hear you Clem Fandango!
Yea, now I get it. Distance vs time not equivalent. So what's the difference between a year time, and a light year?
A year is the orbital period for a planetary body - in our case how long it takes the Earth to go round the Sun.

A light year is the distance light travels in one earth year - 9.46 trillion kilometres.
 

Red Rash

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Pretty amazing images.

If the James Webb telescope can look back to 13.5 billion years ago, what are the chances that one day soon we could build a telescope to look back to the big bang?
 

That'sHernandez

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Pretty amazing images.

If the James Webb telescope can look back to 13.5 billion years ago, what are the chances that one day soon we could build a telescope to look back to the big bang?
You 'just' need a larger mirror to collect more light. The technology is available now, it just costs a lot and would probably need to be sent up and put together in space piece by piece.
 

nimic

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You 'just' need a larger mirror to collect more light. The technology is available now, it just costs a lot and would probably need to be sent up and put together in space piece by piece.
We could theoretically make a telescope the size of the solar system. It would be in many, many parts, obviously. Though I think that would be more for getting really good looks at "closer" things, than necessarily looking as far/far back as possible.
 

Frosty

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Pretty amazing images.

If the James Webb telescope can look back to 13.5 billion years ago, what are the chances that one day soon we could build a telescope to look back to the big bang?
I don't think that would be possible?

Between 240,000 and 300,000 years after the Big Bang was the first time that photons could rest for a second, attached as electrons to atoms. It was at this point that the universe went from being totally opaque, to transparent.
 

Big Andy

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The UK Space Agency (if we have one) should build the Simon Webbe Telescope, it'd be much like this one, but Blue.

:smirk:
 

frostbite

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Amazing!

This was such a complicated engineering project! It is unbelievable that everything worked as planned!

One of the greatest engineering Wonders of the World!
 

amolbhatia50k

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Is there somewhere we can actually understand the relevance and meaning of these photos rather than them wowing in terms of prettiness? Or that will take time
 

nimic

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Stupid question, but is it strong enough to peak on nearby solar systems planets in detail?
It's not really that kind of telescope, I think. As far as I know, looking in detail at close things has a lot to do with the actual size of the thing. JWST is big for a space telescope, and significantly bigger than Hubble, but it wasn't really built to look at star systems.
 

nimic

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https://www.inverse.com/science/what-will-planets-will-look-like-through-jwst

Seems like it is going to look at star systems, but it confirms you're not really going to get detailed photographs or anything. But apparently it could still be used to find exoplanets and possibly determine if there can be life on them.

I said this earlier too, but in the somewhat distant the future we could build a telescope effectively the size of the solar system. That way we could really get a nice, close look at stuff, in high resolution.