Baby the stars shine bright...

April said:
oh my gosh how beautiful and yes... what are those concentric images.. the birth of a star?
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It’s actually the opposite - the death of a star. The Crab Nebula is the remains of a supernova that happened 1000 years ago. The amazing thing is that with stars this is like a seed sprouting - almost everything we are made of on earth was made inside stars that explode like this and spread themselves across space. The shock makes surrounding gas collapse and form new solar systems that include all the precious elements from the supernova that are mixed in - and so a new generation of stars are formed from the old ones.

I think what’s in the middle of the picture is a pulsar- a neutron star - shooting jets out from its poles. Around it are strong magnetic fields that shape electrically charged hot gas into lovely geometric shapes by the rapidly rotating pulsar. Further out is the chaotic swirl of gas from the ancient explosion.
 
John K said:
It’s actually the opposite - the death of a star. The Crab Nebula is the remains of a supernova that happened 1000 years ago. The amazing thing is that with stars this is like a seed sprouting - almost everything we are made of on earth was made inside stars that explode like this and spread themselves across space. The shock makes surrounding gas collapse and form new solar systems that include all the precious elements from the supernova that are mixed in - and so a new generation of stars are formed from the old ones.

I think what’s in the middle of the picture is a pulsar- a neutron star - shooting jets out from its poles. Around it are strong magnetic fields that shape electrically charged hot gas into lovely geometric shapes by the rapidly rotating pulsar. Further out is the chaotic swirl of gas from the ancient explosion.
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:hearteyes: How beautiful the Universe is! Thank you for explaining! So cool!
 
April said:
:hearteyes: How beautiful the Universe is! Thank you for explaining! So cool!
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Wait until you see what the James Webb is going to show us in a few months. Why a few months?
Well, once we get into the insertion orbit, then they can begin to calibrate the cameras and spectrometers and whateverelse-o-meters. But I don’t want to get ahead of everything, let’s get into that L2 first cause that’s the next important milestone.
 
InfernoMink said:
Wait until you see what the James Webb is going to show us in a few months. Why a few months?
Well, once we get into the insertion orbit, then they can begin to calibrate the cameras and spectrometers and whateverelse-o-meters. But I don’t want to get ahead of everything, let’s get into that L2 first cause that’s the next important milestone.
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Yeah I actually can't wait. :hearteyes: Assuming everything goes well! *fingers crossed*
 
Great video @Wyote - I love the idea of a rotating black hole dragging space and time around like ribbons on a maypole. And then shooting them off into a cascade of other universes.

It makes a belief in magic or the paranormal seem quite tame in comparison lol.
 
John K said:
Great video @Wyote - I love the idea of a rotating black hole dragging space and time around like ribbons on a maypole. And then shooting them off into a cascade of other universes.

It makes a belief in magic or the paranormal seem quite tame in comparison lol.
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Right! It's pretty wild stuff. I appreciated it for the visualizations, as it helps me contextualize the ideas better.
Largely just theory at this point, but I believe we are getting ever close to some big breakthroughs in understanding our universe even further.
 

Either way the future looks incredible, if we survive long enough.

If we aren't alone in the universe, then we have all the richness of other life to look forward to.

If we are alone, then it's our destiny to populate all those worlds out there. Our distant descendants will look as much like us as we look like a trilobite, of course, and few of them will know where they came from originally :D. When I say 'our' that's not necessarily humans, but life that originates on the earth. I hope it's humans though.​
 
That's a great comparison shot - an amazing level of detail isn't it? They always find something totally new and unexpected with each big increase in telescope power, so it'll be really exciting to see what it discovers these next few years.
 
John K said:
That's a great comparison shot - an amazing level of detail isn't it? They always find something totally new and unexpected with each big increase in telescope power, so it'll be really exciting to see what it discovers these next few years.
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It's always good to see some tangible progress. The comparison here helps me understand in a practical sense how Webb is an improvement.
Seeing all those stars/galaxies that are much further away with so much more clarity, it's incredible.
This photo is of such a tiny spot in our sky as well.
 
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