Science NASA telescope spots cosmic question mark in deep space

The Helper

Necromancy Power over 9000
Staff member
Reaction score
1,709
A cosmic object in the shape of a glowing question mark has photobombed one of the latest images captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope — and scientists think they know what it might be.

The original near-infrared image, released July 26, depicted a pair of young stars named Herbig-Haro 46/47. Found 1,470 light-years away in the Vela constellation within the Milky Way galaxy, the stars are still actively forming and closely orbiting each other.

The two have been observed and studied by space and ground-based telescopes since the 1950s, but the highly sensitive Webb telescope allowed for the highest-resolution and most detailed image yet. It has the capacity to observe the universe with longer wavelengths of light than other space telescopes.

The Webb telescope illuminates information about the origins of our universe, but the appearance of this mysterious object in the background of this image leaves more questions than answers. The cosmic question mark hasn’t been closely observed or studied, so scientists aren’t exactly sure about the object’s origins and makeup.

 
General chit-chat
Help Users
  • No one is chatting at the moment.
  • V-SNES V-SNES:
    Happy Friday!
    +1
  • The Helper The Helper:
    News portal has been retired. Main page of site goes to Headline News forum now
  • The Helper The Helper:
    I am working on getting access to the old news portal under a different URL for those that would rather use that for news before we get a different news view.
  • Ghan Ghan:
    Easily done
    +1
  • The Helper The Helper:
    https://www.thehelper.net/pages/news/ is a link to the old news portal - i will integrate it into the interface somewhere when i figure it out
  • Ghan Ghan:
    Need to try something
  • Ghan Ghan:
    Hopefully this won't cause problems.
  • Ghan Ghan:
    Hmm
  • Ghan Ghan:
    I have converted the Headline News forum to an Article type forum. It will now show the top 20 threads with more detail of each thread.
  • Ghan Ghan:
    See how we like that.
  • The Helper The Helper:
    I do not see a way to go past the 1st page of posts on the forum though
  • The Helper The Helper:
    It is OK though for the main page to open up on the forum in the view it was before. As long as the portal has its own URL so it can be viewed that way I do want to try it as a regular forum view for a while
  • Ghan Ghan:
    Yeah I'm not sure what the deal is with the pagination.
  • Ghan Ghan:
    It SHOULD be there so I think it might just be an artifact of having an older style.
  • Ghan Ghan:
    I switched it to a "Standard" article forum. This will show the thread list like normal, but the threads themselves will have the first post set up above the rest of the "comments"
  • The Helper The Helper:
    I don't really get that article forum but I think it is because I have never really seen it used on a multi post thread
  • Ghan Ghan:
    RpNation makes more use of it right now as an example: https://www.rpnation.com/news/
  • The Helper The Helper:
  • The Helper The Helper:
    What do you think Tom?
  • tom_mai78101 tom_mai78101:
    I will have to get used to this.
  • tom_mai78101 tom_mai78101:
    The latest news feed looks good

      The Helper Discord

      Members online

      No members online now.

      Affiliates

      Hive Workshop NUON Dome World Editor Tutorials

      Network Sponsors

      Apex Steel Pipe - Buys and sells Steel Pipe.
      Top