[HN Gopher] JWST gets best view yet of planet in hotly pursued s...
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JWST gets best view yet of planet in hotly pursued star system
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 31 points
Date : 2023-03-28 15:40 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| ppaattrriicckk wrote:
| In case I'm not the only one a tad confused about this (awkward)
| sentence:
|
| > JWST looked at TRAPPIST-1 in mid-infrared wavelengths of light
| -- 20 times redder than the human eye can see
|
| What's referred to here, in terms of wavelengths, is the range
| 4.9 to 27.9 mm according to https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-mid-
| infrared-instrument. The longest human eyes can see is around
| 0.75 mm, so I guess that's where the notion of "20 times redder"
| comes from
| blincoln wrote:
| Thank you. It was an extremely confusing statement.
|
| I would have gone with something like "a wavelength about 7 to
| 40 times longer than the longest wavelength human eyes can
| perceive", or "longer wavelengths than a night vision scope
| picks up, but shorter than most thermal imagers capture or
| microwave ovens emit". But really, it might make more sense to
| have just omitted everything after "mid-infrared wavelengths of
| light". Kind of like the unnecessary use earlier in the article
| of both parsecs and light-years. Just go with light-years IMO.
| beastman82 wrote:
| sadly that view is not shared with us via this article
| ben7799 wrote:
| "Article I wrote but copied from somewhere else and left out
| most of the important information, images, video, etc.. and
| didn't link to the canonical source and then jumped to some
| conclusions or put a spin on it" is like a bread and butter
| staple of web journalism. Always frustrating, and so many
| publications have actively switched to making almost all their
| stories fit into that model.
| kloch wrote:
| To ease the disappointment, here's an unrelated jwst image that
| was released today: https://esawebb.org/images/potm2303a/
| Ancalagon wrote:
| The lensing in that is just so incredible.
| adriand wrote:
| Awesome! This video is also amazing:
| https://esawebb.org/videos/potm2303b/
| bdg wrote:
| I suspect it's a measurement and not a photo. Something they
| could put on a chart but that's about it.
|
| There's interesting ideas for imaging exo-planets that involve
| a fleet of satellites past pluto that use the gravity lens of
| the sun as their lens. A system like that could get an image of
| an exo-planet.
| Galaxeblaffer wrote:
| good old Space Time has a pretty good video on this
| https://youtu.be/4d0EGIt1SPc and it might even be possible
| and more feasible to use planets https://youtu.be/F9S21HqfNR0
| and even earth https://youtu.be/jgOTZe07eHA as lenses
| brianherbert wrote:
| This intrigued me so I found an article describing this idea:
| https://news.stanford.edu/press-
| releases/2022/05/02/gravity-...
| colechristensen wrote:
| Which is really all I want to see. A picture and a paragraph
| describing it.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Whenever these articles come up that talk about sister earths the
| only thing I'm really interested in is how far away it is, so
| here you go:
|
| > Researchers have been excited to use the new telescope to
| explore it and its six siblings, which are all roughly the size
| of Earth and which orbit a star 12 parsecs (39 light years) from
| Earth.
| dekhn wrote:
| I guess if you could get a probe up to 0.1c (project orion),
| that's only 390 + 39 years to get direct images from within the
| solar system. But in 390 + 39 years, I assume imaging from our
| own solar system will have gotten significantly better making
| direct imaging possibly unnecessary.
| bdg wrote:
| You might also enjoy: "the wait calculation".
| katsura wrote:
| The Breakthrough Starshot initiative plans to travel at 20%
| of the speed of light, so that could shorten the time
| necessary to get there.
|
| https://www.space.com/laser-sail-centering-breakthrough-
| star...
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