Just one year after the Hubble Space Telescope discovered the farthest star seen to date, the James Webb Space Telescope is now telling us more about what type of star it is, and the nature of its existence.
Nicknamed Earendel, the star is located in the Sunrise Arc galaxy, and existed within the first billion years after the universe’s birth in the big bang. Webb reveals the star to be a massive B-type star more than twice as hot as our sun, and about a million times more luminous. Astronomers also think, basely solely on the colors of Earendel, there are hints of a cooler companion star.
Researchers are currently analyzing spectroscopic observations of the Sunrise Arc galaxy and Earendel, which will provide precise composition and distance measurements.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, D. Coe (AURA/STScI for ESA), B. Welch (NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center; University of Maryland, College Park); Image processing: Z. Levay
Alt Text: The image is split in half vertically to create two images. In the left image, a black background is scattered with hundreds of small galaxies of different shapes, ranging in color from white to yellow to red. Some galaxies, mostly the redder galaxies, are distorted, appearing to be stretched out or mirror imaged. Just a little bit above the center, there is a bright source of light, a star, with 8 bright diffraction spikes extending out from it. The right image is a zoomed-in portion of the image at the left, showing a particularly long, red, thin line that stretches from 1 o’clock to 7 o’clock. There are several bright dots, some thicker than others, along this line, with one labeled as Earendel.
I may be stupid but I really dont think there’s much more to being a good person than “do not add to the suffering in the world”
I’m not in a position to enact meaningful change, I have to work hard every day just to take care of myself, but like, the least I could do is not be a bigot. That’s something anyone can do. I can just live my humble, small life, and as long as I don’t hurt people, and I help people when I see an opportunity that I’m capable of safely contributing to, I think that’s probably enough
my friend kissed my hand tonight to say thank you and goodbye and it reminded me just how beautiful platonic love is. like we went to dinner and shared a beautiful meal with each other and then the three of us piled into one car and drove to a lookout and talked for like half an hour and it was so so so much fun. so simple but so fun. sometimes love is just sharing space with one another. cracking a joke you know will make the others laugh. watching their face light up and them double over in pure joy, tears running down their cheeks as they slap you away from them in an attempt to cease their laughing fit. It’s knowing glances at each other and sly smiles and clutching at each others hands as one of you retells a story for the billionth time. It’s playing our fave songs in the background so we can stop and sing every once in a while. It’s knowing each others addresses by heart. It’s knowing each others body language so well that we’re able to tell when one of us is excited or nervous or full of joy. It’s love. love in one of the most beautiful forms. platonic love.
I’ve been saying this for DAYS- it’s not that he “forgot”…
He CHOSE not to.
Saying he forgot is giving him way too much benefit of the doubt, especially for a guy who has made films with intense VFX for years, and on this film that literally would not be possible in its current state without them.
Nolan actively chose not to include VFX artists, which is an asshole move on several levels… and the fact that there’s the added layer of racism only makes it worse.
In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.
ALT