Who knows? You may become Dr Strangelove instead.
Cracking username by the way.
Astronomy & Space Exploration
- Thread starter MrMarcello
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Cracking username by the way.
my brain cant compute this!
One of my favourite films.
So what is your particular interest in astronomy and space travel?
Spectacular. Blown away by the pictures.
Imagine dropping acid in space.
Imagine dropping acid in space.
Thanks.
Just to mention that there is a programme starting 20:00 UK time on BBC2 about the JWST.
Thanks for the heads up Buster, forgot it was on!
Mark is great on Twitter
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Probably won’t find this interesting but a guy on Twitter saw an Einstein Cross.
Just below the south-west arm of that mega bright star which dominates the photo (a star in our own galaxy which is in the way!) there’s a galaxy with four dots around it.
This is a star/object with a galaxy in front of it but due to the gravity of the galaxy, the light has bent perfectly around it so we see the same star/object at four separate areas around the galaxy.
Mind blowing.
Just below the south-west arm of that mega bright star which dominates the photo (a star in our own galaxy which is in the way!) there’s a galaxy with four dots around it.
This is a star/object with a galaxy in front of it but due to the gravity of the galaxy, the light has bent perfectly around it so we see the same star/object at four separate areas around the galaxy.
Mind blowing.
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Oh yeah, gravitational lensing is super cool. Usually the object being "lensed" is a galaxy too, and sometimes they're really far away.
Ignorant question: if better or more advanced telescopes can allow us to look further into the past, is it possible in theory to create a telescope that would actually allow us to see the big bang?
As far as my limited knowledge goes, I would say no.
You wouldn’t be able to see an explosion or anything. For many millions of years after the Big Bang there were no stars/galaxies and just matter/gas/elements floating around which we wouldn’t be able to see.
I don’t think it would be able to be seen with our eyes, I think maybe only on other wavelengths.
Happy to be corrected though.
We would be able to "see" stuff that isn't galaxies, theoretically, but we'll never be able to see further back than when the universe stopped being opaque. That's 3-400k years after the Big Bang.
This is the earliest the universe has been “pictured”, its the Cosmic Microwave Background. Its the light from when the universe became stable enough to produce atoms and thus photons which by this time has been red-shifted to the microwave range. Estimated to be from ~400k years after the big bang. Theoretically, it should not be possible to picture the big bang before that.
My little brain can’t fathom us being able to see “back in time” when looking through this telescope
The universe is vast and the speed of light is finite, therefore the light we are seeing was produced X amount of years ago. The likelihood is the galaxies that produced that light are no longer there; for example if the Sun were to disappear we wouldn't know about it for 8 minutes as that's the amount of time it takes the light from the Sun to reach Earth.
What about if I get a telescope and look through it, will I be able to see my neighbour stripping off for a shower in her bathroom like she used to when i was 16?
Yeah if you close your eyes
The galaxies are definitely still there. Well, they moved, but they didn't explode or anything.
That's the Theory.
That is my understanding as well.
That point is strangely referred to as Recombination. Even though there was no previous Combination.
The combination is the point at which the plasma had cooled sufficiently to allow the to protons and electrons to combine into hydrogen resulting in the opaque clearing.
Before that, our universe was just a hot opaque plasma with no atoms.
No it's not
The weak and strong nuclear forces came into play as you know
We always look back in time as it takes time for the light to reach our eyes. A telescope is just a light receiver in a similar sense. So the further an object is away the further back in time were seeing it. If an alien civilisation looking at earth right now was 70m light years away they'd be able to see the dinosaurs.
It isn't.
As I understand we can not see as far back as the Big bang with our "eyes". We do however see it as background radiation.
Before 370,000 years after the big bang, the universe was not a place where photos (light particles) could move freely. This is because there were free electrons which cause something called Thomson Scattering.
Once the universe cooled sufficiently, electrons combined with protons to form neutral hydrogren (the misnamed recombination) and then photos decoupled from those hydrogen atoms.
At this point the universe had few enough free electrons to allow photons to pass and that's the (ref shifted version of the) CMB we see today
Note - I have no idea about Thomson Scattering
Yes indeed.
More images released.
Unconfirmed, but a galaxy which could be 'just' 235 million years after the Big Bang.
Unconfirmed, but a galaxy which could be 'just' 235 million years after the Big Bang.
That's interesting. I thought photons were unchanging, because they literally travel at the speed of the light.
What do you mean? How could you make a telescope the size of the solar system? The size of the telescope is limited by the mass available on earth.
That's fecking scaryMore images released.
Unconfirmed, but a galaxy which could be 'just' 235 million years after the Big Bang.
The Event Horizon Telescope is the 'size' of the Earth by combining data from a number of telescopes across the world and their respective fields of vision: https://eventhorizontelescope.org/about
You could make a telescope array that is positioned around the solar system and get the effect of a solar system sized telescope. I think.
I genuinely can’t wrap my brain around this stuff.