Space palettes
The beautiful first photos from the James Webb Space Telescope present the deepest and clearest look but into outer area, Lisa Grossman reported in “Postcards from a new space telescope” (SN: 8/13/22, p. 30).
JWST observes area utilizing infrared, a type of gentle not seen to the human eye. To visualize the pictures, scientists colorize them. Reader John Dohrmann questioned how that colorizing is finished.
JWST’s photos are colorized by senior knowledge imaging developer Joseph DePasquale and science visuals developer Alyssa Pagan, each of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Grossman says. Their primary rule of thumb is to color the photographs utilizing wavelengths of sunshine as a information. The gentle emitted within the longest wavelength in a picture is assigned the colour crimson, and the shortest blue, she says. Wavelengths in between are assigned a spectrum of greens and yellows (SN: 3/17/18, p. 4). But there are additionally different concerns, corresponding to knowledge on the chemical compositions of stuff within the picture. How to colorize these components may be extra of an artwork than a science, Grossman says. “There’s a subjective artistry to it too.”
Reader Stu Kantor requested why some stars within the JWST photos seem to have eight spikes — six massive ones and two smaller ones (see “Out of this world,” beneath).
Those are referred to as diffraction spikes, Grossman says, and so they’re an artifact of the telescope’s optical setup. JWST has two mirrors: a major hexagonal mirror and a smaller secondary mirror that sits in entrance of the first mirror and is held up by three help beams. When it hits the telescope, gentle bends on the two edges of every of the secondary mirror’s helps, producing six diffraction spikes. The six edges of the first mirror additionally create six spikes. Scientists designed the telescope in order that 4 of the spikes from the secondary helps overlap with 4 of the first mirror’s spikes, Grossman says, so although there are 12 spikes, we see solely eight.
Diffraction spikes usually are not distinctive to JWST. “Images from the Hubble Space Telescope have these too, but they only have four,” Grossman says. “The eight points are a distinctive feature of JWST, like an artist’s signature.”
On the nostril
Scientists found a neural hyperlink within the canine mind that connects the olfactory system to imaginative and prescient, which can assist clarify why humankind’s greatest good friend is such a superb sniffer, Laura Sanders reported in “New nose-to-brain link ID’d in dogs” (SN: 8/13/22, p. 9).
The story impressed a number of readers to replicate on the habits of their very own furry associates.
“I now know why my German shepherd could not play the simplest version of the shell game,” Ed Hughes wrote. “Using a small piece of dog food and two Dixie cups … one shift in the location of the cup hiding the dog food completely confused her. I could watch her eyes follow the cup, but she never picked the cup with the dog food. She had prelocated it with her nose, and anything her eyes detected was completely ignored.”
Reader Roy R. Ferguson shared his fascination with canine’ sniffing skills, having labored with the animals in search and rescue efforts for the final 20 years along with his spouse.
“We have learned to allow the K-9s to do their work with as little supervision as possible,” Ferguson wrote. “They constantly make decisions that seem unusual at the time but make sense once the full story is known.”
“Our K-9s have located drops of blood in light rain and human decomposition in various vehicles. Live finds include one man who wandered over 10 miles after a head wound and a 6-year-old who had been out all night …. The child find was notable due to the large amount of scent contamination in the area,” Ferguson added.
“We have no idea how these amazing creatures do such marvelous feats. They work their hearts out for nothing more than praise and a toy reward,” Ferguson wrote. “It has occurred to [us] that we are there to provide them support, drive and work the radio. In return, they make us look as though we know what we’re doing.”