Space and The wonders/mysteries of The Universe

{{ Stunning Lance, great work. Amazing that we can see all that from down here. Even more amazing when you see it captured as well as this. }}

Why are 25 images better than one long image? Is it because tracking goes off over such a long period? (may have answered my own question)

The tracking is not a problem when you have the correct set up.

Best to think about it from the end goal. To get all of that detail, you have to heavily process the image because there is just so little light coming from 2.5 million light years away in addition to the local stars which are much brighter objects.

So, when you are doing that kind of enhancement, you are also dealing with lots of problems, like atmospheric conditions changing, the sensor temperature of the camera changing, the temperature of your optics (I.e. lens or telescope) which can impact down to a single pixel.

So, the additional pictures plus a lot of calibration pictures are there to remove the noise caused by all of that stuff.

Just editing because I missed the major part of your answer: changes in temperature of the camera. So shorter shots are more internally coherent. Do you have special software to combine the shots?

Shorter shots will have plenty of noise in them but yes, inherently they would have less. There are a lot of things that introduce noise from the second the light leaves its source all the way to being registered by the camera sensor.

A lot of cameras dedicates to this kind of thing are cooled to very low temperatures (-40c) to help with this.

And yes, I use a special piece of software for stacking aimed at astrophotography called Deep Sky Stacker. I then use Photoshop for the processing.

Almost there
I'm actually quite nervous. This probably won't happen again in my lifetime. Hope all goes well.

This will be out at L2 I believe; so no chance to do a Hubble style repair if they mess it up.

"What do astronomers eat for breakfast on the day that their $10 billion telescope launches into space? Their fingernails."

- the New York Times

https://webb.nasa.gov/content/about/orbit.html

Today's the day. Fingers crossed.

Yep, fingers crossed. Hubble has given us so many great images and insight in to the universe... this will give so much more if it can make it to is destination!

{{ Lance don't suppose you managed to get a pic of the comet thats about just now, apparently can be seen near Venus just before dawn. }}

I haven't, seen lots of pics from people I follow on Twitter though. I think it might have lit up the last couple of days.

I am not a morning person... not actually seen Venus since earlier this year. Needs to be visible in the evening.

So far so good.

The hard part's over. Locking into L2 won't be difficult; if a few pixels of the mirror are off that will be easy to correct.

Long cooling down period now... hopefully nothing unexpected happens that means it can't function properly. Not the first time this process was required though so shouldn't be a problem.

I am looking forward to seeing the first pictures we get from this. The hubble deep field photos are some of the most amazing things I think I have ever seen! And this is its big brother (or niece/nephew?).

I think it's all IR? No visible images. But that's alright, plenty to see in the IR.

The camera may be imaging in IR but that can easily enough be turned in to images we can see.

The goal is to see distant galaxies red shifted into the IR, but can be adjusted to visible so it will look like what we'd see if they weren't zooming away from us.  Nearby galaxies will have to be processed completely in the IR, which is still worth looking at even if it will be different from what we'd see with our own eyes.

As I understand, the instruments on JWST don't process in a single wavelength and there is enough within the different bandwidths to allow for processing of a "true colour" image.

These things are always not what the human eye can see because of the way that eyes work but shouldn't be too different from what you would expect from a image of this type.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nasa-shares-first-selfie-photograph-183710296.html

The cooling down period Lance was talking about. But for 4 months?! Wow.

First images back today as it also begins its alignment process. Nothing spectacular since it still has months of prep but it's a start.

This guy's style of talking put me off at first, but I got used to it and he goes into some very nice detail.

I will watch when I get a chance. I seem to always have Dr Becky appear in my YT list so get some good JWST and astrophysics content from her.

( Yeah, I saw her too, but Forest would razz me about young females again if I posted her, so I refrained. )

A quick review of the Webb telescope, then a primer on the new visible range telescope NASA will be launching in a few years using a repurposed spy satellite mirror, and the likelyhood to continue servicing Hubble now that independent companies like SpaceX can provide space shuttle replacements.

4 days to go . Wonder what we will see?