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This is Titan, Saturn's largest Moon captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
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this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
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Looks like a blurry picture of a pug
Are those nasa colors because nasa has to filter it most of the time for it to be accurate to we what the human eye would see.
Titan is pretty much yellow. JWST is an infrared telescope, so it doesn’t show the visible spectrum we see. So the colors mean something, but they don’t mean, “what humans would see when looking at it with their eyes.” There are many visible spectrum images of Titan from other sources, however.
Mid-infrared and NIR for jwst.
I see, thanks for the clarification.
Blurry image? Get the CSI team on it to zoom and enhance
I wonder if the blurriness is a resolution problem or a focus problem, since it's so close compared to what it's designed to look at.
Shouldn't matter
Saturn should be far enough away that it's effectively infinite.
Here's some explanation: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/58765/how-does-the-jwst-change-focus-when-it-goes-from-looking-at-a-near-subject-to-lo
A clearer picture, for those interested:
http://annesastronomynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Titan.jpg
From the source:
Titan is the only object other than Earth where liquid hydrocarbon lakes and seas have actually been found (by Cassini) in its polar regions – in abundance in the north polar region and at least one of approximately 20,000 km2, called Ontario Lacus, on its south pole. Just recently, there have also been long-standing methane lakes, or puddles, in Titan’s “tropics” discovered.
Wish they wouldn't waste Telescope time on nearby (relatively) objects that are not in the focal depth of a multi-million dollar space camera
It's science. You learn something regardless
Titan is far enough out that focal depth doesn't really factor into it; as far as JWST is concerned it is at infinity. Which does raise the question of why it's so blurry, though
You know, upon further self thought, maybe nasal blurred it out because it has human settlements. 🤔
I suspect they gathered other data whilst taking the "photo". This is just the public release element of the work.