Red Stardust Array – Stephans Quintet – ToteBag

Eco friendly, reusable canvas tote bags.

Cosmic Stuff eco friendly 14 x 18.5 inch / 35.5 x 47cm tote bags are made of 360gsm weight canvas with strong 26 inch / 66cm black handles. They are constructed using polyester canvas – for strength and durability. Our beautiful art prints on these tote bags are made with special long-lasting, rich colour eco-friendly archival inks. They can be gently and conveniently machine washed because our lush, water-based ink prints have been tested for longevity.

Cosmic Stuff canvas tote bags are easy to fold and store, yet made with strong material and sturdy handles. They are perfect for all eco friendly shoppers wanting a durable tote for everyday use. They are great for shopping, grab-and-go day bags, crafts and hobbies, as hanging storage for e.g. gym shower items or clothing items and other things around the home, and are lovely as easy-fold beach bags. They may also used be as an addition to conventional gift wrapping – doubling as a super useful extra gift.

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.. Sparkling clusters of millions of young stars and starburst regions of fresh star birth grace the image. Sweeping tails of gas, dust and stars are being pulled from several of the galaxies due to gravitational interactions. Most dramatically, Webb’s MIRI instrument captures huge shock waves as one of the galaxies, NGC 7318B, smashes through the cluster. MIRI sees a distinct difference in colour between the dust in the galaxies versus the shock waves between the interacting galaxies.

NGC 7320 resides 40 million light-years from Earth, while the other four galaxies (NGC 7317, NGC 7318A, NGC 7318B, and NGC 7319) are about 290 million light-years away.

This proximity provides astronomers a ringside seat for witnessing the merging of and interactions between galaxies that are so crucial to all of galaxy evolution. Rarely do scientists see in so much exquisite detail how interacting galaxies trigger star formation in each other, and how the gas in these galaxies is being disturbed. Stephan’s Quintet is a fantastic “laboratory” for studying these processes fundamental to all galaxies.

Close groups like this may have been more common in the early universe. 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.

Care instructions: Wash tote bags at 30°C and no more than 800rpm spin cycle. Dry flat.