Skip to main content

PHOTOS FROM MORE THAN 13 BILLION YEARS AGO

Yesterday I indicated that NASA would be releasing the first full-color image released from the James Webb Space Telescope.  Well, here it is:


Our universe is around 13.7 billion years old.  The JWST, launched on December 25, 2021, will have the potential to look back perhaps 13.4 billion years.  It is six times larger and 100 times more powerful than Hubble, sent out 32 years ago in 1990.  Here is a graphic of the same portion of the sky comparing Hub with Jim:


Galaxy clusters, as seen above, are the most massive objects in the universe.  This boggles the mind, but a cluster of galaxies can consist of hundreds to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity.  The typical mass of each is 10 to the fourteenth power - 10 to the fifteenth power the mass of our sun!  Then, there are  bodies such as the Laniakea SUPERcluster as seen to the right.  
Laniakea is Hawaiian for immense heaven.  Remember that asteroid that recently zoomed through our solar system?  Oumuamua was discovered by space scientists at the University of Hawaii using our Pan-STARRS1 telescope on Haleakala, Maui.  Whether it was a comet or asteroid is still being debated.  Oumuamua is Hawaiian for a messenger from afar arriving first.
What is shown in this first JWST photo was discovered by faculty of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii.  The infrared technology used on the new space telescope was developed at the Mauna Kea site on the Big Island of Hawaii.  Sadly, Hawaii is beginning to abdicate international leadership, as the long-ago proposed Thirty Meter Telescope remains suspended by protests from local Hawaiian groups.

Four more photos will be released today.  Here are two of them:


What do they represent?  Read this article.

I've long been saying that light would take 100,000 years to pass through our galaxy from one end to the other.  Well, I just got corrected, the answer now is 200,000 years.  How come?  Turns out that our Milky Way is bigger than we thought.  Nothing to do with the James Webb Space Telescope, but light would take around that long to get across any one of the galaxies shown above.  Of course, there are larger ones, like IC 1101.  Light would take 6 million years to get across this giant frisbee.  Of course, each speck in those JWST photos represents either a galaxy or galaxy cluster, meaning light would take from 100,000 to maybe a billion light years to across...each speck.

- 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota.  Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north.  Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge.  If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic.  Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing.  The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University.  Caught a bus. Was called the  Century 21 Exposition .  Also the Seattle World's Fair.  10 million joined me on a six-month run.  My first. These a...

WHY YOU SHOULD CONVERT TO A JAPANESE HIGH TECH TOILET

Did you know that   Oktoberfest   in Germany is mostly in September?  The very first day of Oktoberfest 2021 was supposed to be today, September 18, extending into October 3.  Well, as in 2020, Oktoberfest was cancelled. So why is it called by that month when it is held mostly in September?  The first celebration in 1810 was in October. Did you also know that Oktoberfest is held only in Munich?  These days seven million drink more than a liter ( about three typical cans ) of beer each, costing around $11.  Except for my wife and I when we followed the crowd to board the S-Bahn to the fairgrounds near Old Town.  It was drizzling a bit.  We bought a large pretzel outside of a typical barn where beer is served.  We did not know that you needed to get this inside the hall.  So no one came to serve us beer.  After a while we decided to have lunch, and the restaurant we settled on only served wine.  Thus, we might have been the ...

THE FIRST 84 YEARS OF MY LIFE

The first half of my life was spent preparing myself for my final 42 years.  This was a mostly trying and stressful period involving a less than ideal youth, then struggles to get through school, my first few jobs and accompanying life, ending two months later on a Sunday with  Part 15E , so it was a spiritual conclusion to my final transition.  I never did count the number of actual postings, but I suspect it was around 25 parts.  The ending had to do with golf, the disappearance and re-appearance of an  8-iron cover.  That was the final clue to whether the beyond after death would be eternal gloom or Heaven. Today, I provide only one transition, but hint about a final one, for this, after all, is Sunday.  I'm 84 years old, so let me summarize what happened during the first phase, from 0-42, and follow with the years 42-84.  As this is 2024, that key transition year was 1982. I can't seem to find this photo, but as a one-year old baby, I was fat....