In the best case, the detection is at the 2.4 sigma confidence level (less than the usual 3 for reasonable confidence and will below the 5 required for strong confidence), and if previously suspected issues with the instrument are true, the detection could disappear completely.
I do not have a strong confidence in this result. (But at least they didn’t publish it in Nature, in which case you would absolutely know it’s wrong…)
This is just super fucking cool. It’s so rad they can pick out chemical signatures from the light passing through a planet’s atmosphere from a star 120 light years away. Absolutely gonzo bananas, the JWT is too cool. I will go on a personal mission to punch Donald Trump in the taint if they actually do cut the Roman telescope.
NASAs “habitat words observatory” was ment to be the next major telescope after the Roman space telescope, and was meant to have its primary function be the search for extraterrestrial life which would help tremendously with these kinds of situations.
Was being the key word as apparently the shitbag GOP administration decided they want to axe ALL future telescope programs including the Hubble replacement Nany Roman… Scumbags.
Their only interest in space is glory and imperialism. They don’t give a shit about the science they just want to claim Mars as US territory. And as someone that has been a huge space nerd ever since I was a kid I am absolutely livid at the defunding of NASA.
“For Services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”
From the SpaceX TOS. Oligarchs want to rule as kings on Mars, not as Americans.
Even the commercialisation of space flight bothers me. I mean, I know its inevitable but when the point of crewed space flight currently is still overwhelmingly for science, there’s just something gross about for-profit companies making a mint off human endeavour. But I also grew up in the 80s when science and the future seemed bright and exciting and not a capitalist dystopia.
Are the tracking systems for those massive telescopes sophisticated enough to track objects by designation, or do they still require coordinates? Like I know they have tracking for earths rotation but I can’t even imagine needing to look up the info to set sights on some body for the allotted view time, however many days that would be done for (I assume it’s a set of long precise numbers, far too long to easily memorize)
Astronomers have generally thought that massive black holes at the centers of galaxies expel gas in jets of material only during their formative years, when the central black hole is gobbling up gas and stars and producing lots of radiation. This makes them stand out as what astronomers call active galactic nuclei (AGN), or quasars.
If, as the new study suggests, the ionized hydrogen halo around galaxies is more diffuse, but also more extensive, than thought, this implies that the central black holes may actually become active at other times in their lives.
I love how we keep finding more and more about the role that black holes play in our universe.
If I understood this correctly, they analyzed incredibly blurry images and concluded that there are clouds of gas around galaxies, then they extrapolated the found gas up to all or almost all galaxies and concluded that it can fulfill the calculated expectations.
What I understood is kind of the opposite–they already knew there were hidrogene clouds around galaxies but analyzed some almost imperceptibly blurry images and found they were bigger than currently thought. They're blurry because they were taken in some wavelength not observable until now that is scattered by the ionized gas.
Seems like you’re on the west coast (USA). Me too.
I’m hoping I get to duck out for a bit and take it all in after bedtime and chores. I won’t be able to pull out a telescope tonight, but sometimes binoculars surprise me.
You probably won’t see much in terms of globular clusters in binos. I feel like you should be able to resolve the Leo triplet in them, though I expect it would be a challenge. Probably your best bet is the beehive cluster in Cancer, which should be near the Zenith, the little beehive cluster in Canis Major, and some of the easier double stars (the second star out from the cup on the handle of the big dipper- mizar and alcor- is great) and the Orion belt stars. Good luck!
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