[nuccy]

Technically the comparison is not totally fair, that Hubble image was taken in visible light, while Webb's in infrared. Dust blocks visible light stronger, so background stars are effectively hidden from Hubble, but not from Webb. Here [1] you can see same field in visible and close infrared taken by Hubble. Webb of course shines in all the fine details and faint stars number.

[1] https://cdn.spacetelescope.org/archives/images/screen/heic15...

[abcc8]

I think the comparison is (rightly) meant to highlight the different imaging capabilities of the two telescopes.

[xeromal]

But if the hubble can take an infrared picture, that would be a better comparison point, no?

[nuccy]

Webb observes "much further" into the IR [1].

1. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/hu... (this image is from [2])

2. https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-vs-webb-on-the-s...

[dwringer]

JWST is undeniably a superior and remarkable instrument, but there has been a bit of a trend I have noticed on social media - and this may just be my perception rather than reality - of comparing it with suboptimal alternatives rather than the best image we had prior to the JWST, often making the new images look dramatically better when in fact the improvements to the best images we already had are more subtle (perhaps because they are particularly subtle on low res article thumbnails and mobile devices?)

[itishappy]

I doubt it's anything nefarious. I think it's due to choosing comparisons based on popularity vs content.

Hubble's visible light Pillars of Creation image, for example, is super famous and instantly recognizable, but I'm not sure I would have known what I was looking at if the infrared version was used.

Also, different devices rarely have exactly the same usage and specifications. For example, Webb and Hubble have very different wavelength sensitivities, and this has tradeoffs in resolution and quality. In other words, the subjective image quality you get from the pictures may not tell the whole story of how valuable the data itself is.

[mlindner]

Well some of that is because JWST's images are actually lower resolution than Hubble in many cases (depending on the wavelength). Though at wavelengths they both operate in, Webb's will of course be much higher resolution.

[sbierwagen]

>Webb’s deeper infrared vision (0.6 microns to 28.5 microns)

That's true for the entire observatory, but this particular image was captured with NIRCAM, the near-infrared instrument, which goes out to 5 microns. Deep infrared is done with MIRI, a lower resolution instrument. (As required by the Abbe diffraction law)

[edvards]

Does this mean what Hubble sees is actually closer to what I'd see with my own eyes than Hubble, or Hubble's version is closer?

[nullc]

Hubble can take images similar to what you see, but the famous pillars of creation image is not an example of that.

That in image in "Hubble pallet" or SHO. It's an image where the colors come from three extremely narrow spectral bands that have better contrast in astronomical images because they show ionized gasses with less noise from dust reflected blackblody light.

Red=sulphur line, Green=Hydrogen line Blue=oxygen line.

The oxygen line appear blue-green to the human eye, and the Hydrogen alpha line is a dim far red color that the eye isn't very sensitive to, the sulphur line is even further towards the infrared, barely visible at all.

[dylan604]

Ignoring magnification and only considering visible light, Hubble imagery is a colorized version of what you could see if you could stare at an object for hours at a time while accumulating every photon during that time at a 0Hz refresh rate into a single image rather than just seeing new faint photons at a constant refresh rate.

[augustuspolius]

Is it possible to visualize how a human eye would see Pillars of Creation in real time? This always confused me with Hubble’s colorized photos.

[adgjlsfhk1]

Not really. These scientific images are pretty much always remappings of arbitrary frequencies into RGB.

[neemazz]

Depends on what you mean by "with my own eyes".

There is no way you could see this with your own eyes, there's no vantage point you can "stand on" to see the pillars - you'd either be too far away to see anything, or if you moved close enough so your eyes could actually focus on something, you'd be "inside" it, meaning you would see one star at most.

[officialjunk]

yes, hubble's image is closer to what you could see with your eyes, since we also (mostly) sensitive to visible light. the zoom magnification is different, though, of course.

[mensetmanusman]

Depends on when you would see it. Because of inflation the color of things far away is shifting to longer wavelengths so they become invisible later in the timeline of the universe (invisible to humans).

[jpk]

The subject of this particular image is part of the Eagle Nebula in our own galaxy. So it's near enough to be gravitationally bound and not subject to the redshift of cosmic inflation.

[throwoutway]

Both can be true. Maybe an analogy would be a car vs truck, or photo camera vs video camera. They’re the same things but provide different value.

[peanutz454]

Now I am intrigued, the infrared image from Hubble seems to be able to see through even more clouds than JWST! What gives?

[loonster]

The JWST and Hubble have multiple cameras. The Hubble IR image is likely just the IR camera while the JWST is likely a composite of multiple cameras.

(This is purely speculation.)

[stormbrew]

Put another way: jwst sees both the clouds and (many of) the stars, while Hubble seems to have been able to see one or the other more clearly at a time.

You could infer from that that the thing jwst is doing better is having a much greater range of spectrum available to it at a time (though I don't actually know if that's correct).

[dylan604]

Fair? This is exactly why they are not the same type of telescope only Biggie Sized. Seeing these comparisons is the point. "Here's visible light, and now here's what's hiding behind the visible dust" should be the tag to everyone of these kinds of comparisons

[poulpy123]

*it's not so much that isn't fair, just that they show different things but the problems is that it is not explained