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Sep 6 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Enter the spider's lair 🕸🕷

Great new #JWST image of 30 Doradus, the Tarantula Nebula, in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Do follow the link & download the full-sized image if you dare – there's a huge amount of superb detail in there when you pan & zoom.

esawebb.org/news/weic2212/ JWST NIRCam mosaic of the Tarantula Nebula, 30 Doradus, in t
In the link you'll find NIRCam near-infrared & MIRI mid-infrared images of the Tarantula Nebula & the dense cluster of young stars, NGC2070, at its core, plus NIRSpec near-infrared integral field spectroscopy.

Also check out the @esascience thread:

@esascience These data were taken as part of the Early Release Observations set published & discussed on 12 July, but didn't make the cut then simply because there was so much other good stuff to show.
@esascience And again, if you have the bandwidth, do download the full-sized image: at 14,557 x 8,418 pixels, it's just loaded with amazing details as the young stars sculpt & blow away the dust & gas cocoon they've been born from.
@esascience I should have more to say later, after a videocon with my @spacerockslive friends, but in the meantime, cruise around the image, take in the sights, & follow the links above to get more scientific & technical info on this image & the others 👍

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More from @markmccaughrean

Mark McCaughrean Profile picture
Sep 6
Two spectacular new images of the Sun marking the inauguration of the #InouyeSolarTelescope on Haleakala, Maui.

They show the complementary nature of observing at different wavelengths: @ESASolarOrbiter extends this principle to those invisible from the ground.

HT @PlanRad Image of an 82,500km square...Image of an 82,500km square...
@ESASolarOrbiter @PlanRad Be sure to click & view at full-size: they're lovely.

Both show a an 82,500km square region of the Sun at 18km resolution.

L: in the emission line of H-beta at 486nm showing the chromosphere above the surface

R: in the Fraunhofer G-band at 430nm showing surface granulation
@ESASolarOrbiter @PlanRad Original press release from @NatSolarObs, @AURADC, & @NSF is here: nso.edu/press-release/…
Read 4 tweets
Mark McCaughrean Profile picture
Aug 25
Another great early science result from #JWST: the first unambiguous detection of CO2 in the atmosphere of an exoplanet.

Seen in one single transit of the planet WASP-39b in front of its star with the @esa-led NIRSpec instrument.

So much more to come.

esa.int/Science_Explor… Image
@esa This result comes from one of the Early Release Science programmes & is fully described in a paper that came out on arXiv overnight & will be published in Nature next week.

Congratulations to the large team of authors & everyone who made this possible.

arxiv.org/abs/2208.11692
@esa To add a bit of background here, the gas planet WASP-39b blocks about 2.5% of the light of its host star as it crosses in front of it from our perspective.

You can see that clearly in the top curve, which is about eight hours long – the transit takes about three. Image
Read 19 tweets
Mark McCaughrean Profile picture
Aug 24
I believe strongly in the idea of the BBC & many parts of it do a brilliant job.

But it is impossible to deny that its news & current affairs output since Brexit has been heavily compromised by dark political influence, as @maitlis so cogently says.

theguardian.com/media/2022/aug…
@maitlis I find Question Time & Newsnight unwatchable now, & the glaring unwillingness in many news programmes to openly confront the deeply-damaging impact of Brexit & government failings during the pandemic & more widely has helped drive an ugly ideological wedge between many Britons.
@maitlis Call me biased if you will: I'm pro-European & liberal, & anti-nationalist. But show me the hard evidence that Brexit has yielded any benefits to the British public at large, beyond a tiny number of people who have taken advantage of disaster capitalism & backhanders from mates.
Read 6 tweets
Mark McCaughrean Profile picture
Aug 23
About that “sound of a black hole” tweet.

An X-ray image of Perseus Cluster shows ripples in hot gas driven by a black hole.

A series of radial profiles in the image generate data curves. The frequencies are multiplied by ~200 quadrillion & then sonified.

So, err, not really.
The Chandra webpage gives a good explanation of what was done, but the result really isn’t “the sound of a black hole”.

Sonification of data sets like images, spectra, particle hit rates, etc. is fine for outreach & accessibility, but it’s important not to mislead or confuse.
Yes, inasmuch as the Chandra image shows ripples in gas & gas can transmit actual sound, this sonification is arguably a bit closer to real sound than sonifying magnetic fields, for example. But radial X-ray intensity profiles through ripples really don’t let us “hear” that gas.
Read 4 tweets
Mark McCaughrean Profile picture
Aug 21
Wave-particle duality.

#JWST senses light from distant stars & galaxies as photons, their energy liberating electrons in the detectors.

But the light also has wave-like properties, interacting with the geometry of the telescope optics to create diffraction patterns. An image of a bright star as seen with JWST, its light diffr
This is a full-resolution blow-up of the star 2MASS J17554042+6551277, used for focus measurements in March 2022. Data processing by @gbrammer & @CosmicSprngJWST, with some enhancement by me in LightRoom.
@gbrammer @CosmicSprngJWST Dan Coe at @stsci made this colour combination using #JWST images in several different wavelengths from 0.7 to 4.4 microns, combined with his publicly-available Trilogy code.
Read 27 tweets
Mark McCaughrean Profile picture
Aug 18
And for the old school infrared observers, here’s my copy of Dan Gezari’s Catalog of Infrared Observations & the listing for IC348-IR where we pointed the telescope in 1990 & discovered HH211 👇

(This is the third edition from 1993, but same observations of IC348-IR 🙂) ImageImage
Dan’s catalogs were utterly essential in pre-internet days. A complete listing of every IR astronomical observation ever published to that date, with names, coordinates, wavelengths, beam sizes, fluxes etc, plus a full bibliography of all of the papers. About 1000 pages long.
A huge amount of credit has to go to Marion Schmitz, Patricia Pitts, & Jaylee Mead at Goddard Space Flight Center who did the bibliography search, data input, & publication of the CIO.
Read 4 tweets

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