Above: "My God, it's full of galaxies!" From the image description: "Thousands of galaxies flood this near-infrared image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. High-resolution imaging from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope combined with a natural effect known as gravitational lensing made this finely detailed image possible."
The most recent issue of Free Astronomy Magazine (September-October 2022) is available for your reading and downloading pleasure at www.astropublishing.com.
The Hubble Space Telescope was the defining telescope of two generations, the pinnacle of observational astronomy, well worth the repair missions, and the source of some non-trivial percentage of all desktop backgrounds here on Earth. As of 11 July 2022, Hubble is now officially the "before" in every other space image you're likely to see for the next decade or two to come. If you've not seen webbcompare.com yet, please do so and think about how many more Ph.D.'s we need in astronomy and astrophysics.
I sat through both the administration's first-first image roll-out (watching a screen from a screen didn't quite provide the "umph" that the first image release deserved), then the official release of the first five (which was not engineered with NASA-style redundancy), then found myself on travel in a car, listening to podcasts describing those first five images for several hours straight, which was a great way to get several overlapping perspectives on what specific disciplines saw as extract-able content from the image reveals. That first Deep Field Webb image is so full of galaxies I almost lament our evolution within a galaxy seemingly in the outfield of some big universe game.
"… the Hubble Extremely Deep Field took two weeks of exposure; Webb went deeper before breakfast."
Dr. Jane Rigby, Webb First Images Release Event
Our fearless leader Michele continues his out-there and way-out-there coverage of recent events in science and speculation, with an article addressing recent studies searching for Planet 9 in Outer Space and recent subcommittee sessions considering Plan 9 from Outer Space. UAP, UFO, We Don't Know.
Fact-filled and visually stunning as always.
Browser-readable version: www.astropublishing.com/5FAM2022/
Jump to the PDF download (21.5 MB): September-October 2022
