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I think the comparison is (rightly) meant to highlight the different imaging capabilities of the two telescopes.
by abcc8 4y ago
I think the comparison is (rightly) meant to highlight the different imaging capabilities of the two telescopes.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- xeromal 4y agoBut if the hubble can take an infrared picture, that would be a better comparison point, no?
- nuccy 4y agoWebb observes "much further" into the IR [1]. 1. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/hubble_webb_emspectrum_cropped.jpg https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/hu... (this image is from [2]) 2. https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-vs-webb-on-the-shoulders-of-a-giant https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-vs-webb-on-the-s...
- dwringer 4y agoJWST is undeniably a superior and remarkable instrument, but there has been a bit of a trend I have noticed on social media - and this may just be my perception rather than reality - of comparing it with suboptimal alternatives rather than the best image we had prior to the JWST, often making the new images look dramatically better when in fact the improvements to the best images we already had are more subtle (perhaps because they are particularly subtle on low res article thumbnails and mobile devices?)
- itishappy 4y agoI doubt it's anything nefarious. I think it's due to choosing comparisons based on popularity vs content. Hubble's visible light Pillars of Creation image, for example, is super famous and instantly recognizable, but I'm not sure I would have known what I was looking at if the infrared version was used. Also, different devices rarely have exactly the same usage and specifications. For example, Webb and Hubble have very different wavelength sensitivities, and this has tradeoffs in resolution and quality. In other words, the subjective image quality you get from the pictures may not tell the whole story of how valuable the data itself is.
- mlindner 4y agoWell some of that is because JWST's images are actually lower resolution than Hubble in many cases (depending on the wavelength). Though at wavelengths they both operate in, Webb's will of course be much higher resolution.
- edvards 4y agoDoes this mean what Hubble sees is actually closer to what I'd see with my own eyes than Hubble, or Hubble's version is closer?
- dylan604 4y agoIgnoring magnification and only considering visible light, Hubble imagery is a colorized version of what you could see if you could stare at an object for hours at a time while accumulating every photon during that time at a 0Hz refresh rate into a single image rather than just seeing new faint photons at a constant refresh rate.
- augustuspolius 4y agoIs it possible to visualize how a human eye would see Pillars of Creation in real time? This always confused me with Hubble’s colorized photos.
- fhars 4y agoYes, just open you favorite paint program, create a new image, select black color, select the fill tool, and click into the image. We don't spend oodles of money to build sensitive instruments to observe things you could see with the unaided eye.
- wumpus 4y agoScientists are unconcerned with that question. Your eye is nothing like the Hubble. Your eye isn't that useful for doing science. Hubble images are.
- sbierwagen 4y ago>Webb’s deeper infrared vision (0.6 microns to 28.5 microns) That's true for the entire observatory, but this particular image was captured with NIRCAM, the near-infrared instrument, which goes out to 5 microns. Deep infrared is done with MIRI, a lower resolution instrument. (As required by the Abbe diffraction law)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throwoutway 4y agoBoth can be true. Maybe an analogy would be a car vs truck, or photo camera vs video camera. They’re the same things but provide different value.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]