Explanation: A mere 390 light-years away, Sun-like stars and future planetary systems are forming in the Rho Ophiuchi molecular cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to our fair planet. The James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam peered into the nearby natal chaos to capture this infrared image at an inspiring scale. The spectacular cosmic snapshot was released to celebrate the successful first year of Webb's exploration of the Universe. The frame spans less than a light-year across the Rho Ophiuchi region and contains about 50 young stars. Brighter stars clearly sport Webb's characteristic pattern of diffraction spikes. Huge jets of shocked molecular hydrogen blasting from newborn stars are red in the image, with the large, yellowish dusty cavity carved out by the energetic young star near its center. Near some stars in the stunning image are shadows cast by their protoplanetary disks.
The star in the upper left hand corner has a double star effect from the JW camera. Is this an anomaly or is it bc there are actually 2 stars really close to each other?
SpaceCadet wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 7:46 am
The star in the upper left hand corner has a double star effect from the JW camera. Is this an anomaly or is it bc there are actually 2 stars really close to each other?
I just noticed that, too. It must be a double star, either an optical double or a visual binary. They seem to have about the same magnitude, judging from the spikes, and seem to be separated along a line from 10 to 4 on a clock face.
SpaceCadet wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 7:46 am
The star in the upper left hand corner has a double star effect from the JW camera. Is this an anomaly or is it bc there are actually 2 stars really close to each other?
SpaceCadet wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 7:46 am
The star in the upper left hand corner has a double star effect from the JW camera. Is this an anomaly or is it bc there are actually 2 stars really close to each other?
I see this regularly with my own images (which have just typical 4-spike diffraction). Close doubles are often not apparent at their core, where all the light is together in a big blob, but are made obvious by their not quite overlapping diffraction spikes.
Chris
*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory https://www.cloudbait.com
One amazing year of JWST images and research in in the history books. May we have 20+ more! There was a great PBS Newshour segment about JWST on last night, and it actually featured Judy Schmidt, whose image processing prowess we all know well here!
Note: using the start time format makes the [ youtube ] tags fail to recognize it. But you can drag the slider to 34:39 in the video below if you like.
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
-- "To B̬̻̋̚o̞̮̚̚l̘̲̀᷾d̫͓᷅ͩḷ̯᷁ͮȳ͙᷊͠ Go......Beyond The F͇̤i̙̖e̤̟l̡͓d͈̹s̙͚ We Know."{ʲₒʰₙNYᵈₑᵉₚ}
SpaceCadet wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 7:46 am
The star in the upper left hand corner has a double star effect from the JW camera. Is this an anomaly or is it bc there are actually 2 stars really close to each other?
I see this regularly with my own images (which have just typical 4-spike diffraction). Close doubles are often not apparent at their core, where all the light is together in a big blob, but are made obvious by their not quite overlapping diffraction spikes.
Interesting. So, we can see two true close doubles in this image, correct? One at upper left and one at far lower left.
-- "To B̬̻̋̚o̞̮̚̚l̘̲̀᷾d̫͓᷅ͩḷ̯᷁ͮȳ͙᷊͠ Go......Beyond The F͇̤i̙̖e̤̟l̡͓d͈̹s̙͚ We Know."{ʲₒʰₙNYᵈₑᵉₚ}
SpaceCadet wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 7:46 am
The star in the upper left hand corner has a double star effect from the JW camera. Is this an anomaly or is it bc there are actually 2 stars really close to each other?
I see this regularly with my own images (which have just typical 4-spike diffraction). Close doubles are often not apparent at their core, where all the light is together in a big blob, but are made obvious by their not quite overlapping diffraction spikes.
Interesting. So, we can see two true close doubles in this image, correct? One at upper left and one at far lower left.
That would be my assessment. If this were a processing artifact (e.g. an alignment error) we'd see it uniformly across the image. Also, note that the offsets are different in the two cases. We can estimate the position angles of the otherwise obscured binaries from that.
Chris
*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory https://www.cloudbait.com
I see this regularly with my own images (which have just typical 4-spike diffraction). Close doubles are often not apparent at their core, where all the light is together in a big blob, but are made obvious by their not quite overlapping diffraction spikes.
Interesting. So, we can see two true close doubles in this image, correct? One at upper left and one at far lower left.
That would be my assessment. If this were a processing artifact (e.g. an alignment error) we'd see it uniformly across the image. Also, note that the offsets are different in the two cases. We can estimate the position angles of the otherwise obscured binaries from that.
Ok, what does your last sentence mean? What "position angles"?
-- "To B̬̻̋̚o̞̮̚̚l̘̲̀᷾d̫͓᷅ͩḷ̯᷁ͮȳ͙᷊͠ Go......Beyond The F͇̤i̙̖e̤̟l̡͓d͈̹s̙͚ We Know."{ʲₒʰₙNYᵈₑᵉₚ}
Hmm, 50 young stars within a volume of about a cubic lightyear! This makes me wonder whether, if, over time, it is natural for sibling stars to migrate away from each other, which behavior would seem to be necessary to explain why most older stars - like our Sun - are found several lightyears apart. The counter case I suppose would be much larger nurseries of stars which might tend to form large clusters of stars that manage to stay together due to a stringer collective gravity?
-- "To B̬̻̋̚o̞̮̚̚l̘̲̀᷾d̫͓᷅ͩḷ̯᷁ͮȳ͙᷊͠ Go......Beyond The F͇̤i̙̖e̤̟l̡͓d͈̹s̙͚ We Know."{ʲₒʰₙNYᵈₑᵉₚ}
johnnydeep wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 3:14 pm
Hmm, 50 young stars within a volume of about a cubic lightyear! This makes me wonder whether, if, over time, it is natural for sibling stars to migrate away from each other, which behavior would seem to be necessary to explain why most older stars - like our Sun - are found several lightyears apart. The counter case I suppose would be much larger nurseries of stars which might tend to form large clusters of stars that manage to stay together due to a stringer collective gravity?
Open clusters do not contain many gravitationally bound stars (by which I mean stars that are in closed orbits around each other). Open clusters are short-lived and simply dissipate.
Chris
*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory https://www.cloudbait.com
Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be
alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk. — Garrison Keillor
johnnydeep wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 3:14 pm
Hmm, 50 young stars within a volume of about a cubic lightyear! This makes me wonder whether, if, over time, it is natural for sibling stars to migrate away from each other, which behavior would seem to be necessary to explain why most older stars - like our Sun - are found several lightyears apart. The counter case I suppose would be much larger nurseries of stars which might tend to form large clusters of stars that manage to stay together due to a stringer collective gravity?
Open clusters do not contain many gravitationally bound stars (by which I mean stars that are in closed orbits around each other). Open clusters are short-lived and simply dissipate.
Ok. Now why would that be? I would think that if all the stars in an open cluster like this formed from the same mass of gas, that there would be a natural tendency for the stars so formed to remain bound to each other. Hmm, is the gas itself not even bound by its own gravity due to being so dispersed and subject to other forces like random collisions?
-- "To B̬̻̋̚o̞̮̚̚l̘̲̀᷾d̫͓᷅ͩḷ̯᷁ͮȳ͙᷊͠ Go......Beyond The F͇̤i̙̖e̤̟l̡͓d͈̹s̙͚ We Know."{ʲₒʰₙNYᵈₑᵉₚ}
johnnydeep wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 3:14 pm
Hmm, 50 young stars within a volume of about a cubic lightyear! This makes me wonder whether, if, over time, it is natural for sibling stars to migrate away from each other, which behavior would seem to be necessary to explain why most older stars - like our Sun - are found several lightyears apart. The counter case I suppose would be much larger nurseries of stars which might tend to form large clusters of stars that manage to stay together due to a stringer collective gravity?
Open clusters do not contain many gravitationally bound stars (by which I mean stars that are in closed orbits around each other). Open clusters are short-lived and simply dissipate.
Ok. Now why would that be? I would think that if all the stars in an open cluster like this formed from the same mass of gas, that there would be a natural tendency for the stars so formed to remain bound to each other. Hmm, is the gas itself not even bound by its own gravity due to being so dispersed and subject to other forces like random collisions?
Gravity is a very weak force. Protostars naturally form quite far from each other, so they are not gravitationally bound. Think about what 50 stars in a cubic light year actually means: an average separation of about 4 light years. About the same as the distance from the Sun to our nearest stellar neighbor.
Chris
*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory https://www.cloudbait.com
Open clusters do not contain many gravitationally bound stars (by which I mean stars that are in closed orbits around each other). Open clusters are short-lived and simply dissipate.
Ok. Now why would that be? I would think that if all the stars in an open cluster like this formed from the same mass of gas, that there would be a natural tendency for the stars so formed to remain bound to each other. Hmm, is the gas itself not even bound by its own gravity due to being so dispersed and subject to other forces like random collisions?
Gravity is a very weak force. Protostars naturally form quite far from each other, so they are not gravitationally bound. Think about what 50 stars in a cubic light year actually means: an average separation of about 4 light years. About the same as the distance from the Sun to our nearest stellar neighbor.
That math isn't right. Fifty stars in a cubic light year means that ALL the stars are within sqrt(3) ly of each other (that's the length of the solid diagonal)! If the 50 stars were equally spread throughout the volume, each would be in the center of its own little sub-cube with volume 1/50 of a cubic ly, which is a cube 0.271 ly on a side. That gives a solid diagonal length for each little cube of sqrt(3) * 0.271 = 0.4 ly. Oh, I suppose you must have just left out the decimal point!
-- "To B̬̻̋̚o̞̮̚̚l̘̲̀᷾d̫͓᷅ͩḷ̯᷁ͮȳ͙᷊͠ Go......Beyond The F͇̤i̙̖e̤̟l̡͓d͈̹s̙͚ We Know."{ʲₒʰₙNYᵈₑᵉₚ}
Ok. Now why would that be? I would think that if all the stars in an open cluster like this formed from the same mass of gas, that there would be a natural tendency for the stars so formed to remain bound to each other. Hmm, is the gas itself not even bound by its own gravity due to being so dispersed and subject to other forces like random collisions?
Gravity is a very weak force. Protostars naturally form quite far from each other, so they are not gravitationally bound. Think about what 50 stars in a cubic light year actually means: an average separation of about 4 light years. About the same as the distance from the Sun to our nearest stellar neighbor.
That math isn't right. Fifty stars in a cubic light year means that ALL the stars are within sqrt(3) ly of each other (that's the length of the solid diagonal)! If the 50 stars were equally spread throughout the volume, each would be in the center of its own little sub-cube with volume 1/50 of a cubic ly, which is a cube 0.271 ly on a side. That gives a solid diagonal length for each little cube of sqrt(3) * 0.271 = 0.4 ly. Oh, I suppose you must have just left out the decimal point! :)
Thought I typed it! In any case, that's still very far apart. Two stars at that distance are weakly bound, and when you throw in the perturbations of a cloud of them, it's game over for any sort of stability.
Chris
*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory https://www.cloudbait.com
Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 4:13 pm
Gravity is a very weak force. Protostars naturally form quite far from each other, so they are not gravitationally bound. Think about what 50 stars in a cubic light year actually means: an average separation of about 4 light years. About the same as the distance from the Sun to our nearest stellar neighbor.
That math isn't right. Fifty stars in a cubic light year means that ALL the stars are within sqrt(3) ly of each other (that's the length of the solid diagonal)! If the 50 stars were equally spread throughout the volume, each would be in the center of its own little sub-cube with volume 1/50 of a cubic ly, which is a cube 0.271 ly on a side. That gives a solid diagonal length for each little cube of sqrt(3) * 0.271 = 0.4 ly. Oh, I suppose you must have just left out the decimal point!
Thought I typed it! In any case, that's still very far apart. Two stars at that distance are weakly bound, and when you throw in the perturbations of a cloud of them, it's game over for any sort of stability.
Ok, thanks.
-- "To B̬̻̋̚o̞̮̚̚l̘̲̀᷾d̫͓᷅ͩḷ̯᷁ͮȳ͙᷊͠ Go......Beyond The F͇̤i̙̖e̤̟l̡͓d͈̹s̙͚ We Know."{ʲₒʰₙNYᵈₑᵉₚ}
Ok, I finally get it. I'm slow... AVAO is showing where this APOD fov is in relation to the much larger Rho Ophiuci Cloud Complex! And the Rho Ophiuci star system itself isn't even IN this APOD. No, it's the brightest star (system) in the center of the large blue area far above in AVAO's image!! <smacks head>
And just for some more context, here's an annotated version of the entire complex side by side with AVAO's image (rotated):
Webb's Rho Ophiuchi
But you can drag the slider to 34:39 in the video below if you like.
