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James Webb Telescope

Last time I checked, the reason Pluto was demoted was because if Pluto fits the definition, then potentially hundreds more objects would also be planets, and that's just too confusing and high effort for schoolteachers to keep up with.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
Strikes me that deciding what criteria do and don't qualify a body for the label "planet" isn't actually science, so the matter of science's honesty doesn't arise.
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Yeah, this. It's not a scientific question so much as just agreeing upon a definition. It's going to be "arbitrary" just like defining the difference between an "island" and a "continent" is ultimately an arbitrary decision. We let Australia be a continent, but not Greenland. Also, why is Europe a continent? Isn't Europe just part of a larger continent called Eurasia?
 
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theprestige said:
Last time I checked, the reason Pluto was demoted was because if Pluto fits the definition, then potentially hundreds more objects would also be planets, and that's just too confusing and high effort for schoolteachers to keep up with.
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Do anybody know why Ceres was demoted originally?
 
This thread is about the JWST, the most expensive, advanced, powerful and incredible space telescope ever, yet there seems to be so little new images and information being published that this thread is relegated to debating what a planet is. Why such an apparent dearth of new images and information? Is it there but I’m missing it, or is it all just for the boffins now?

If they don’t keep the non-boffins in the loop some will start to make things up . . . “What are they hiding? Alien life? Big Bang/Expanding Universe models are wrong? Evidence of a god? The Earth is actually flat? Some reason we’re all doomed? etc?” . . . It’s a worry, I tells ya.
 
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Well, for one thing it's not taking snapshots. Some of these projects take time to "expose" ("integrate" is a more correct word I suppose).
 
ynot said:
This thread is about the JWST, the most expensive, advanced, powerful and incredible space telescope ever, yet there seems to be so little new images and information being published that this thread is relegated to debating what a planet is. Why such an apparent dearth of new images and information? Is it there but I’m missing it, or is it all just for the boffins now?

If they don’t keep the non-boffins in the loop some will start to make things up . . . “What are they hiding? Alien life? Big Bang/Expanding Universe models are wrong? Evidence of a god? The Earth is actually flat? Some reason we’re all doomed? etc?” . . . It’s a worry, I tells ya.
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https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/09/13/webbs-scientific-method-what-to-expect/

"Starting the week of Sep. 19, NASA will share a new Webb image or spectrum at least every other week. Check the Webb blog every other Monday to find out when to expect that week’s image."

So far we've seen Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune.

The actual science isn't being done by NASA per se. The team that proposed a particular observation gets some privileged time with the data. Then it goes public.

If you want to see what is happening with that, you should check out arxiv:

https://arxiv.org/search/?query=jwst&searchtype=all&source=header
 
steenkh said:
Do anybody know why Ceres was demoted originally?
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Because they found a bunch of other smaller asteroids in similar orbits, and decided they needed a new category for them. Ceres got lumped in with the rest of the asteroids at that point.
 
Neptune Shows Off Its Rings in Near-Infrared Light

On Sept. 21, 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope delivered the clearest view of Neptune’s rings in more than 30 years. Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) captured several bright, narrow rings as well as the planet’s fainter dust bands. Voyager 2 was the last to detect some of these rings during its flyby in 1989, but this is the first time we have an infrared image of them.
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That is very cool. Although the gentleman conducting the interview doesn't seem to understand anything about astronomy, such as the difference between a planet and a star.
 
This video is about an idea for a future telescope which in theory could be able to resolve an exoplanet in very minute detail. Not just a single pixel or two, but enough to resolve features on the surface such as oceans and continents, in the case of an earth-like planet.

I've heard this idea but it sounded a little bit far-fetched. However, apparently it is not so far-fetched, and this gentleman explains how it could work.

 
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