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I remember wondering about those as a kid. Thank you!!

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Did the bright star sitting centre-bottom merge with the rectangle cluster to it's left over that space of time then?

No, it's likely a star that James Webb was able to pierce through so that's why it isn't there on the modern image

Edit: sorry I might be wrong, it may been added in for the movie

Cool thanks for answering. To witness something like this is probably one of the most fascinating feats mankind has managed. It's a shame people have to fight so much instead of going full throttle on space exploration.

Damn I would say this is the most dated part of the movie now

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Can you explain what pierce through means?

That's actually an amazing shot from 1946. Props to the team that captured it originally. I'm endlessly fascinated by what was done so long ago with the tech then available.

I actually think that star doesn't exist. It doesn't show in amateur photographs, either. Perhaps it was added as part of the artistic process of making the film?

Sadly much of the movie holds up.

What do you mean by that? JWST doesn't "pierce through" stars.

I’m no astronomer, but I’ve seen this movie at least 40 times. That star is Clarence Odbody, Angel 2nd class. It zooms in from left to right when Joseph calls for him, and blinks when he talks. It’s a special effect from 1946, and I highly doubt it represents a real celestial body ;)

Look past it so it isn't in the way of the image.

Just rewatched. That war montage was so good.

Just to explain a little, JWST isn’t capable of ‘piercing through’ any stars. However some stars do emit less light in infrared than other bandwidths depending on their temperatures so some stars can show up as dimmer.

The main thing JWST can look through is interstellar dust clouds as they are mainly opaque in the optical wavelength.

Although I think in this case it was just one of the angels from the film so an added effect

Not possible to see through a star, even for JWST.

Since JWST cant see through stars, its more likely that star is behind the bottom left galaxy in this picture if it exists at all. They do appear to be in slightly different positions so its possible.

That is so cool! When watching the movie I just assumed this was all a matte painting. Nice to see it was an actual astrophotograph.

They look like a cross too...

Cool asf galaxy

EXTREMELY STUPID QUESTION PHRASED AS A STATEMENT FOLLOWS sorry

Since all these pictures are of the infrared spectrum... aren't they kind of fake in a meaningful way? As in there's no way you could see this, it's just a CGI of a bunch of heat data points? Isn't this all essentially false color images cooked up in a computer and made to look cool?

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I wouldn’t call them fake, but you’re right in saying that we wouldn’t see them in the same way. It’s not that they’re not visible, but they just look different to us as we see optical light.

For a quick example you can look at a comparison between JWST and Hubble of these galaxies. The Hubble image is FAR closer to what we’d see with our eyes as it’s coloured according to the optical light that’s received. JWST has more false colour as it’s assigning different parts of the IR spectrum their own colours, but you can still see they look almost the same, it’s just that some parts of the image (the dusty bits in the Hubble optical pic) are almost transparent in JWST’s IR.

Even in optical though there’s some inaccuracy. For some telescopes the colour comes from ‘filters’ which tend to single out certain elements and assign them a colour. This isn’t always accurate to real life, but it just adds to the flair of a lot of images.

I 100% would not call them fake though. Infrared light is just as valid as optical light, it’s just that our own eyes can’t detect it. There’s no ‘fake CGI’ involved it’s just that the telescope is capable of seeing more light than our own eyes are capable of.

Just to reiterate infrared light isn’t just looking at how ‘hot’ these space objects are, it is actually the same exact type of light that we can see, just a different amount of energy. It’s like how dogs can hear higher pitched noises than humans can hear; it’s still sound, but our ears aren’t able to pick it up.

Why is your extremely limited human vision any more valid than the vision of a photosensor?

This is so cool. Thank you. You should post it on r/todayilearned

YOU are the best thanks for the perfect explanation!

I'd like to ask another question in the form of an ill informed statement

>infrared light isn’t just looking at how ‘hot’ these space objects are

Isn't it though? I mean I suppose an we could say that in the visible spectrum, we are looking at how bright things are (amplitude), but also what color they are...so in the IR we are looking at how hot things are (amplitude/ brightness), but also which frequency (color) they are emitting. And so the false color added by computer processing is assigned based on something like higher frequency IR = closer to blue, and lower frequency IR= closer to red?

OK ROBOT BOY sorry if I'm microagressing against your silicon based buddies!

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Ya it was added in, my bad

Wow, they even went to their same spots for the new pic. Amazing /s

It uses a different spectrum of light to see objects farther away in better detail so the star in front may appear a lot fainter

What's wrong with him? Is he sick?

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Worse......he's discouraged.

It’s ok we’ll assimilate you last

Heat is not the same as infrared light - heat can be emitted along a wide variety of wavelengths. We’re just looking at wavelengths and amplitudes on a different part of the spectrum.

It’s present in the Webb picture but is not a “star”. Follow the the 3 stars to the bottom left of the spiral in the upper left. You will find the correlating region on the current photo is a cluster of distant objects behind the dust cloud of the lower left spiral galaxy.

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It's more like putting a warm or cool filter on a photograph to shift the colors more blue or red.

So did the galaxies get a little bit closer to each other, since 1946?
are they heading for a galaxy merger?

It's just that the right side is more detailed, you wouldn't be able to see a difference in 80 years. Let alone 1000.

Hmmm... maybe. How's the user experience?

We were watching this yesterday and joked about the special effects, and noted that the 40 scene came from the Hubble. I shared this with the family.

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this is basically it. these telescopes are 'seeing' in wavelengths the human eye cannot detect - these images are basically just 'frequency adjusted' for our vision. It's a bit like night-vision goggles.

I came here to ask a similar question, mine was. Did that super nova fade out in this time span? But the answers to your question answered mine.

Awesome shot... was wondering what it was from as I watching yesterday.

Also, neat to see the Webb telescope managed to get a pic while some angels were having a little conference. Kinda eerie how some of the stars and the galaxies are lit exactly like the movie showed as they talked.

It’s not, but the representation at the end is indeed fake - the colors are simulated.

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Could say the same thing about our brain’s interpretation of colors.

No, because that’s how we define color.

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In a certain sense, I’m shocked at how similar the pictures are, despite 80 years of technology, trillions of dollars in funding, and an observatory in space versus on the earth.

Where it’s our brain or a machine, or a combination of both, it’s still a system doing an arbitrary interpretation. Theoretically there could be something in the universe that perceives it the same as we perceive this false color image.

Whichever image represents more data is technically more correct.

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That's true. It sounded like you mean that some stars become invisible with JWST which they don't.

I believe the left most galaxy is not part of the same system. It's actually smaller but much closer to Earth than the other galaxies. From our position it looks like its nearby the others but it's not.

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The right-most one in this picture. It's the one that is out of line with the other four, NGC 7320.