“We are stardust, we are golden.” How can you not love this stuff? I’m all agog and a-drool here. Pure poetry to be able to see back in time into the heart of deep space star nurseries.
The progeny of the 1990 Hubble, the colossal JWST, or Webb infrared telescope camera, was conceived in 1977. After many mishaps and missed dates (it was supposed to be built in 2002, and ready in 2005), it was finally launched Dec. 25, 2021. It took six months for Webbie-cam to reach its destination, and to send back these stellar photos. Wow, I am gobsmacked. This is the most extraordinary news in three years.
Hubble photos took weeks of constant exposure, Webbie-cam managed to see through all that cosmic dust and achieve absolute clarity and enlightenment in just 12 hours. But unlike Hubble and E.T., if something goes wrong, the golden-eyed Webbie cannot call home, nor can astronauts take a space jaunt to tweak it. Webbie has enough juice to last about 20 years. Then it’s lights out. Sayonara, so long and thanks for all the fish.
The gold-plated lens array, designed at Stanford, is 21.7 feet across, the size of a VW Bug, and looks like bee’s dreampad, or a MI6 prop from GoldenEye. Because it is infrared, it has a special shield array, and orbits in the forever shadow of the moon and earth. “JWST operates in a halo orbit, circling around a point in space known as the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point…” In other words, direct exposure to light or heat would fry Webbie-cam san. It’s like totally chill, dude.
Webb is orbiting a million miles from Earth, and is geared to peer through impenetrable clouds of thick cosmic dust, into the secret hearts and wombs of the earliest galaxies and stars ever born. We are literally looking back billions of years in the space/time continuum with these images of ancient “high redshift” starlight. In this case, red stars are the oldsters. White stars are teenagers. OK, my mind is sufficiently blown, folded, stapled and mutilated.
One of my favorite nebulae along with the Horseshoe, or Omega Nebula, is the Eta Carinae Nebula, host to a hopping hot young star nursery, and home of the Mystic Mountain, the Homunculuse Nebula, and the Keyhole Nebula in the Carina-Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way, at a mere 6,500 and 10,000 light years from Earth. And who doesn’t love the gas ring of the Southern Ring Nebula? Aka the Eye of God. And for the record, I’m a Sagittarius. We don’t need no stinking badges.
“The image captures part of a "stellar nursery called NGC 3324 at the northwest corner of the Carina Nebula," NASA said. It's roughly 7,600 light-years from Earth.”
“International collaboration gave us the most powerful space telescope ever made, and the deepest infrared views of the universe ever seen. With our partners at ESA - European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency, the science can begin. Together we #UnfoldTheUniverse: “
The central star, Eta Carinae, meaning bright shining one, or the keel of a boat, preferably in ancient Greek—with a wajet eye painted on the prow, is believed to be a mere 2 to 3 million years old, and is fast losing mass. That’s a polite way of saying it’s spewing star-farts that are occluding the situation, said Major Tom.
The dying star will soon explode as a gigantic supernova or go all hypernova on us which could happen any day now, any way now, or maybe a million years from now, and it will wipe out planets and starfields within a few thousand light years. Stay tuned. Stay golden, Ponykids. Hubble and Webbie are the new cosmic power couple.
More photos here.
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