Mark McCaughrean

Another nice piece about our #JWST Orion images & results in The Guardian – thanks to Hannah Devlin for talking to me about them, & also to Matthew Bate & Ant Whitworth, star formation theorists, for their takes.

The Jupiter Mass Binary Objects or JuMBOs are a really big discovery, we believe. Check out the paper led by my colleague Sam Pearson that we've submitted to Nature here: markmccaughrean.net/science

(But there's more ...)

#PiecesOfOrion

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/oct/02/jumbos-jupiter-mass-binary-objects-discovery-orion-nebula-new-astronomical-category

Discovery of ‘Jumbos’ may herald new astronomical category

Jupiter-mass binary objects floating freely in Orion Nebula appear to defy usual definition of planets

The Guardian
Oct 2, 2023 at 11:05amWeb
Show threadGeoff 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Oct 2, 2023
@markmccaughrean I'm pinching the "Chihuahua-mass pet...it's a cat" line for use with my 6th years 🤣
Show threadMark McCaughreanOct 2, 2023
@_thegeoff Tigger is veryupset though, as he says he's never seen a 6kg chihuahua 😉
Show threadGeoff 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Oct 2, 2023
@markmccaughrean Orders of magnitude...
Show threadProf. Günther HasingerOct 2, 2023
@markmccaughrean wonderful stuff, Mark! Congratulations.
Show threadMark McCaughreanOct 3, 2023

@HasiProf Apologies for missing this yesterday, Günther – it was a bit of a crazy day with the release & media, then trying to get the submitted papers on arXiv the same day. We succeeded with one, but are still struggling with reformatting the A&A one.

But yes, it is good to see these images & early results out in the wild at last after a very long & hard push all summer, plus 25 years work before that too, of course 🙂

Much more to come ...

Show threadKnud JahnkeOct 3, 2023

@markmccaughrean @HasiProf

I remember you talking about plans with 500 (?) hours of JWST around 2003. Been a while.

Show threadMark McCaughreanOct 3, 2023
@knud @HasiProf Ha – a JWST SWG IDS has 110 hours. Still a decent amount, but important to realise that this is wallclock time, including pointing, acquisition, offsetting, dithering, moving filter wheels, not on-source integration time. The efficiency of the Orion survey was 37% ...