Mark McCaughrean

And ironically, the same agency is perfectly happy to publish the results of my image processing for missions like Rosetta, BepiColombo, JUICE, Gaia, & more – this is a JWST-specific policy.

I'd best not say more here, but I suspect you get my drift.

So I'm not about to turn over my hard-won individual filter mosaics for someone else to further process & composite in the name of "quality control". Ultimately, it just means nugatory work & fewer official image releases, which serves no-one well. Certainly not the agency I worked for for 15 yrs.

But I've been making colour composites from IR data for 40 years. It's one of the reasons I got involved with JWST in the first place & I'll take the quality of my images against anything "official" from JWST any day. Plus my HH288 colour scheme closely matches other HH object releases.

Well that exposes a raw nerve. Without naming names, let's just say that those agencies running JWST outreach refuse to publish any images made by anyone other than their own graphics people. I understand the need for quality control, but it's also clearly about policing the aesthetics.

Thanks, Thomas – I'd appreciate that. I know that Bluesky doesn't offer much space (another reason I'm never here, preferring Mastodon's generosity & algorithmic purity), but I think it's reasonable to expect proper credit wherever images are posted.

It's also a pity, because I'm often impressed by the work such folk do, especially @geckzilla.bsky.social, for example. And when I asked her & others if I could use some of their work in my book, alongside ESA, NASA, ESO etc., the credits spread over 6.5 full pages. Again, it's not hard to do.

I'm not sure why "status" would make me immune from wanting to receive credit for the work I've done, both in winning the time for these observations & designing them. It's not hard to do (as you have shown), but some social media image processors seem to think it's irrelevant. Which I hate.

Bluntly, this is something I absolutely hate about some of the archive hounds. Again, I'm fine with the data being used, of course, but it really, really comes over as lazy & almost dishonest not to give appropriate credit. It's not hard to find the info. But hey, that's social media for you ...

Yeah, as if they proposed the observations 🙄 I mean, of course the data should go public, but just how hard is it for people to acknowledge those who competitively won the time & painstakingly designed the observation strategy.

Hi, Thomas – PI of those observations here. Could you please acknowledge the people who successfully proposed for these JWST data to be taken & who designed the observations? FWIW, here's my take on the same dataset, which came with a lot of heavy-lifting.
bsky.app/profile/mark...
flic.kr/p/2rTPMvp

And while yes, the data should be in the public domain after the proprietary period expires, it's important that the work of the scientists who proposed, won, & defined the observations be fully credited (as you do). Receiving recognition for work done is the sine qua non of a scientist's career.

Hmm, I see your point, but ... Anyway, my frustration isn't so much with the folk who make images from archival data, as with a large space agency who refused to release my image as is, saying they would only do so if I gave them my processed b/w slices for them to impose their aesthetics on 🙄

Only very occasionally, Yuval; thanks. I hope everyone will look at both images & realise quite how much work is involved in removing all of NIRCam's artefacts, but of course, your automated version gets a bazillion more likes than mine. I don't know why I bother sometimes – it's so dispiriting.

n image of a young protostellar outflow called HH288 in the constellation of Cassiopeia, as seen with JWST. Much of the background is dark black and blue, with many stars sprinkled across with different colours and brightnesses, many showing the classic eight-pointed shape that comes from the JWST optics. The Dragon Jet itself is a swath of red, orange, and yellow emission spread horizontally across the image, with at least two crossing flows. The main flow resembles a Chinese dragon, hence the name. The presence of several protostellar outflows associated with The Dragon and also in the separate dense core below it, The Dragon's Egg, suggests that this is an interesting place to study young outflows from protostars spanning a range of masses.

Hello folks – it's been a while 👋

Just popped in to show off my new #JWST NIRCam image of a young protostellar jet in Cassiopeia, HH288, aka The Dragon Jet 🐉

If you like what you see, there's much more info & a movie over on Mastodon: mastodon.social/@markmccaugh...

and Flickr: flic.kr/p/2rTPMvp

A picture of our gold and brown bengal cat standing next to a copy of a book with a spacey cover and a house plant, on one of our balconies with red tiles.

Aloha again 🤙

Materialising briefly to let you know my book, "111 Places in Space That You Should Not Miss", published by Emons Verlag, is out now in Europe & the UK, & the US in September 🔭🚀🛰️🪐☄️✨

10% discount at uk.bookshop.org/p/books/111-... with code "lovebookshops" 📚

100% Tigger approved 😽

Aloha 🤙