Design:
The Tarantula Nebula is coloured with flowing brush strokes in shades of rose pink and mauve against a smoky sky. This cosmic masterpiece captures the ethereal beauty of the nebula, using colour and texture to convey its dynamic, swirling nature. The mirror array of the James Webb Space Telescope is suggested with hexagonal outlines of deep tones, framing the space beyond.
The smoky sky serves as a hauntingly beautiful backdrop, its deep tones providing a lovely contrast to the shimmering hues of the nebula. The painterly strokes sweep across the canvas with a sense of grace and movement, picking up the turbulent yet delicate ethereal web of particles.
Stars are glinting like precious gems against the smoky backdrop. Newly born from the nebula’s swirling matter, they shine with a brilliant light through the cloudy veils.
Product information:
Canvas cushions:
Handmade personalised canvas throw cushions.
Size: 24 x 24 inches / 60.9 x 60.9cm.
Handmade to order, within +/- around 1/2 inch / 1.3cm of their full size.
The dimensions are for the unfilled cover, once the insert is in place they may measure up as slightly smaller edge-to-edge.
With interior design and decoration it is all in the finishing touches. A few carefully designed cushions can easily transform the mood of any room. Decorative, soft to touch and yet practical, these lovely throw cushions will instantly add a noteworthy touch to your space. The image reproduction is of great quality with vibrant colours, and the materials are soft yet durable.
A zippered canvas cover with a Fibre Fill insert. Virgin fibre filling is flame retardant and complies to BS 5852 part 2. This is an anti-allergy filling that is very similar density to feather cushions.
The poly canvas is durable and holds the image print very well. Cosmic Stuff printed cushions are colour tested to strict regulations to give you superb durability and colour vibrancy.
Faux suede cushions:
Handmade personalised faux suede throw cushions.
Size: 24 x 24 inches / 60.9 x 60.9cm.
Handmade to order, within +/- around 1/2 inch / 1.3cm of their full size.
The dimensions are for the unfilled cover, once the insert is in place they may measure up as slightly smaller edge-to-edge.
A zippered faux suede cover with a Fibre Fill insert. Virgin fibre filling is flame retardant and complies to BS 5852 part 2. This is an anti-allergy filling that is very similar density to feather cushions. The faux suede is durable and holds the image print very well. Cosmic Stuff printed cushions are colour tested to strict regulations to give you superb durability and colour vibrancy.
Narrative behind the art:
Each of the 18 hexagonal-shaped mirror segments is 1.32 meters (4.3 feet) in diameter, flat to flat. (Webb’s secondary mirror is 0.74 meters in diameter.) The primary mirror segments also have an additional actuator at its centre that adjusts its curvature. The telescope’s tertiary mirror remains stationary.
The mirrors are made of beryllium because it is very strong for its weight and is good at holding its shape across a range of temperatures. Beryllium is a good conductor of electricity and heat, and is not magnetic.
Aligning the primary mirror segments as though they are a single large mirror means each mirror is aligned to 1/10,000th the thickness of a human hair. Webb needs to be very cold (“cryogenic”), with its mirrors at around -220 degrees C (-364 degree F).
Once a mirror segment’s final shape is corrected for any imaging effects due to cold temperatures, and polishing is complete, a thin coating of gold is applied. Gold improves the mirror’s reflection of infrared light. The mirrors are put inside a vacuum chamber and a small quantity of gold, about the weight of a golf ball, is vaporized and it deposits on the mirror. A thin layer of amorphous SiO2 (glass) is deposited on top of the gold to protect it from scratches in case of handling or if particles get on the surface and move around (the gold is pure and very soft).
Engineers on Earth made adjustments/corrections to the positioning of the Webb telescope’s primary mirror segments to bring them into alignment – to ensure they would produce sharp, focused images. These corrections were made through a process called wavefront sensing and control, which aligns the mirrors to within tens of nanometres. The work performed on the telescope optics resulted in a NASA tech spinoff for diagnosing eye conditions and accurate mapping of the eye. The region resembles a burrowing tarantula’s home, lined with its silk.
In addition to young stars, Webb reveals distant background galaxies, as well as the detailed structure and composition of the nebula’s gas and dust.
At only 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, the Tarantula Nebula is the largest and brightest star-forming region in the Local Group, the galaxies nearest our Milky Way. It is home to the hottest, most massive stars known.
Within the stellar nursery clouds, points of light indicate embedded protostars, still gaining mass. While shorter wavelengths of light are absorbed or scattered by dust grains in the nebula, and therefore never reach Webb to be detected, longer mid-infrared wavelengths penetrate that dust, ultimately revealing a previously unseen cosmic environment.
Star-forming regions in our Milky Way galaxy are not producing stars at the same furious rate as the Tarantula Nebula, and have a different chemical composition. This makes the Tarantula the closest (i.e., easiest to see in detail) example of what was happening in the universe as it reached its brilliant high noon.
Product care information:
Care instructions: Wash outers gently at 30°C and no more than 800rpm spin cycle.
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