Quote:NASA's James Webb Space Telescope spotted a question mark in deep space. It could be 2 galaxies colliding.

Sonam Sheth and Morgan McFall-Johnsen
Aug 10, 2023, 6:29 AM GMT+7









NASA, what is this? NASA, ESA, CSA. Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

• NASA's James Webb Space Telescope spotted a question-mark-shaped object in deep space.
  
• The object appears hidden in an image of two young stars devouring gas and dust.
  
• The question mark could be two galaxies colliding, interacting, and distorting each other.
  

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The James Webb Space Telescope was conducting its usual business — staring at objects of scientific interest across the cosmos — when it accidentally captured something hilariously familiar in the distant universe.
Is that a giant question mark?

??? NASA, ESA, CSA. Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
It sure looks like one. Is the universe trying to tell us something? Or ask us something? Or is it just laughing at us?
Actually, scientists think this may be a pair of galaxies merging together. They just happen to make a question-mark shape, as seen from Webb's perspective.
"Their interactions may have caused the distorted question mark-shape," representatives of the Space Telecope Science Institute told Space.com.

What are you playing at, James Webb Space Telescope? NASA GSFC/CIL/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez; Insider
"This may be the first time we've seen this particular object," STScI said. "Additional follow-up would be required to figure out what it is with any certainty."
It could also be a single galaxy with an odd shape, but a merger seems like a good explanation to Matt Caplan, an assistant professor of physics at Illinois State University.
After all, galaxies collide and merge all the time.

A merging pair of galaxies, captured by Webb. ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus, A. Evans
"The two distinct features could easily be merging galaxies in the background, with the upper part of the question mark being part of a larger galaxy getting tidally disrupted," Caplan told Space.com. "Given the color of some of the other background galaxies, this doesn't seem like the worst explanation. Despite how chaotic mergers are, double lobed objects with curvy tails extending away from them are very typical."
The bigger picture
Webb wasn't looking for a question mark. Here's the larger picture the telescope captured:

The full picture shows what Webb was looking at in the first place: a pair of actively forming stars, called Herbig-Haro 46/47. NASA, ESA, CSA. Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
Beautiful, isn't it? NASA released this image on July 26, saying in a statement that it shows the "antics" of two young stars that are still actively forming.
"Look for them at the center of the red diffraction spikes," NASA wrote in the release. "The stars are buried deeply, appearing as an orange-white splotch."
The pair of stars, known as Herbig-Haro 46/47, are growing as they feed off of gas and dust that surrounds them in a disk. The disk itself is invisible, but its shadow appears in two dark cone-shaped regions next to the stars.
The pink-orange lobes that dominate the picture are material that the stars have been shooting out as they grow over thousands of years.
NASA added that the pair of stars is an "important object to study because it is relatively young – only a few thousand years old. Star systems take millions of years to fully form. Targets like this give researchers insight into how much mass stars gather over time, potentially allowing them to model how our own sun, which is a low-mass star, formed."

(08-10-2023, 09:17 PM)Ninurta Wrote: Even the Universe has noticed the monumental failures of the BidenHarris regime. They are sending us a clear message, and that message says "what the fuck? What the hell are y'all doing over there?"

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Quote:Earendel was first discovered last year by the Hubble Space Telescope. The star is located so far away that its light has taken 12.9 billion years to reach Earth, appearing to us as it did when the universe was just 7 percent of its current age. “The smallest objects previously seen at such a great distance are clusters of stars, embedded inside early galaxies,” says NASA.

Because the universe is expanding incredibly fast, the star’s distance is now believed to be over 28 billion light-years from Earth.

Hubble was able to find Earendel thanks to a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.

This occurs when the gravitational field of a massive object, such as a galaxy or, in this case, a huge star, bends and distorts the path of light from a background object, such as a more distant galaxy or quasar. This bending of light creates a lens-like effect, magnifying and sometimes even distorting the appearance of the background object.

Researchers estimate that Earendel is at least 50 times the mass of the Sun and millions of times brighter.
“But even such a brilliant, very high-mass star would be impossible to see at such a great distance without the aid of natural magnification by a huge galaxy cluster, WHL0137-08, sitting between us and Earendel,” NASA explained in a statement.

Now that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has directly imaged the star, researchers can begin follow-up studies to measure its brightness and temperature and even determine its composition. Webb’s suite of new instruments and a mirror with high sensitivity to infrared light allows it to collect more information that the limited Hubble telescope cannot do.

We’ll know more about any discoveries or findings in the coming months.

Quote:Tolkien used the original Old English name Eärendel for all drafts previous to The Lord of the Rings, and first he related it with the Elvish words ea ("eagle") and earen ("eyre"), but the exact meaning of the name remained unclear within the Legendarium until he remade the name into Quenya to Earendil.
Tolkien Gateway wiki