Spooky Pillars of Creation snap reveals a dark side The James Webb Space Telescope team has released its latest snap of the Pillars of Creation that strikes a perfect eerie, dusty tone for Halloween. Unlike the star-filled, color-rich photo of the astronomical marvel NASA published this month taken using JWST's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the latest image shows the pillars …
So four downvotes (so far) for linking to an article that tells a story about James Webb and his homophobia. Well done folks for not even bothering to justify yourselves with a reply.
I remind you of the opening paragraph of the article:
"James Webb's legacy was to stand for a status quo where queer Black people like me could never have a home in the NASA community. Naming the incredible new telescope after him has come to represent the contradictions of my job, says Chanda Prescod-Weinsten"
I take it you are homophobic, racist and bigoted and far too cowardly to post even as 'Anonymous Coward'. On a day when a TV actor in 'Heartstopper' has beed forced to 'come out' as bi (https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/kit-connor-heartstopper-outed-bisexual_uk_6360dfabe4b046b39ca160d9) and the Soccer World Cup is about to be held in one of the most homophobic countries on Earth, it is nice to see that you feel confident enough to post anonymous downvotes. Let's have your rationale in a post and discuss this next time shall we?
Have you considered that it might be because you posted a link to a news site that you 'might' have to log in to and not because of any homophobic sentiment in these forums?
I'm not wasting my time clicking on an article I'd have to pay to see, and that in turn makes it a pointless reference to back up your claims which most people may not have heard before.
This is what happens when people rush to think the worst before thinking.
"I take it you are homophobic, racist and bigoted and far too cowardly to post even as 'Anonymous Coward'."
That's a hell of a leap top take!!!
Maybe people downvoted simply because it's not relevant to the science.
It's the past which is often very different to the present regarding social mores and most people are product of the past they were brought up in. In this specific instances, it's not even about Webb. The only link is the telescope is named after him and his science achievements. If we cancel everyone from the past who doesn't match up to current mores and morels, a lot of science and art will disappear too.
FWIW, I didn't vote at all on your post.
John Brown (no body) "Maybe people downvoted simply because it's not relevant to the science."
In that case a simple reply asking the relevance of my post would have been adequate.
I am also curious as to how you know this. But genuinely, thanks very much for posting a coherent reply.
"If we cancel everyone from the past who doesn't match up to current mores and morels, a lot of science and art will disappear too."
Indeed. Newton was a vindictive person, particularly regarding Hooke and Leibnitz, Einstein was not exactly faithful to his wife, and, of course there are innumerable cases of actual murder and medical experiments being conducted which have benefitted health (Burke and Hare's victims were used for anatomy lessons for medical students and the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis experiment(gruesome, not for the faint hearted) did, I suppose, provide some actual information, at least initially). But surely it worth remembering that some highly successful people were less than perfect? I do not mind being corrected or even downvoted, if there is an explanation, it is the absence of any justification that annoys me. (Though I expect this posting will gather some more.)
Definitely a Halloween-esque image. I look forward to the discoveries that will come from combining the Webb and Hubble images in their multiple wavelengths.
I do wonder what the god-botherers would do if this had been the first image. Would we now be referring to the structure as the Claw of Death instead of the Pillars of Creation?
BTW, I think a wineglass icon would be too twee. I, personally, miss the clueless Paris Hilton icon. I'd suggest replacing Paris with the head of Lord Raglan of Charge of the Light Brigade (and sleeve) fame keeping the ?.
Is that we are looking at the past. This cloud may already have collapsed into one or more stars, but the light from those events have not reached us. If indeed the want to know how stars form…the need only to keep looking at tjis cloud….for 6500 more years, at minimum.
The pictures are pretty (and indeed imposing), but we should remember that the shots which show all the dust were taken in the infrared, and therefore in colours which we cannot actually see. So the human-visible versions we see here are actually generated by an algorithm which allocates a visible colour to a particular spectrum of infrared intensity as a function of position on the screen.
So it is really a sort of high-tech painting by numbers.
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