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Appreciation post: my kid asked why we take pictures of things we can't see

She was looking at a deep field image from the James Webb and asked that. It hit me that these photos aren't just data, they're the only way we can actually look at these places. What's an image that made you feel like you were seeing something impossible?

3 comments

3 Comments

ray_campbell462mo ago

Check out the Pale Blue Dot photo. It shows our whole world as a tiny speck in a sunbeam.

julia5492mo ago

Honestly, that's a really deep question from a kid. Did she have any thoughts on what it means to "see" something?

taylor_park752mo ago

Julia's right about the seeing thing. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field gets me. It's a patch of sky smaller than a grain of sand held at arm's length, but it shows thousands of galaxies. We're literally looking at light that's been traveling since before Earth existed. That's not just seeing, it's time travel.