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#25: Unfold the Universe
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#25: Unfold the Universe

How NASA made the stars accessible.

Alexa Heinrich
Jul 13
3
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#25: Unfold the Universe
accessiblesocial.substack.com

“There’s space for everybody.”

That’s the bio of NASA’s official Twitter account. Short but impactful. A four-word statement that says so much.

It would seem that the NASA digital team has taken their bio to heart and turned it into a leading theme for their current social media campaign: sharing the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing the pictures yet, let me just tell you that they are truly breathtaking and a stunning testament to how arresting the universe is. And judging by their alt text, the NASA team obviously wants everyone to experience the wonders of space.

Scroll through NASA’s tweets from today and you’ll find beautiful images of the cosmos accompanied by equally beautiful alt text. It’s clear that the NASA digital team put a lot of thought and care into how they described the Webb Telescope images, and their descriptions feel like a love letter to space exploration and the infinite marvels of the universe. They are proof that making your content accessible doesn’t rob you of creative freedom.

If anything, accessibility encourages creativity. It makes you think outside the status quo box and discover new ways to deliver your content in the most ideal way possible.

Accessibility expands the world for everyone, making even distant stars attainable. It’s a beautiful thing indeed.

-Alex

Twitter avatar for @NASANASA @NASA
Cosmic cliffs & a sea of stars. @NASAWebb reveals baby stars in the Carina Nebula, where ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds shape colossal walls of dust and gas. nasa.gov/webbfirstimages #UnfoldTheUniverse
The image is divided horizontally by an undulating line between a cloudscape forming a nebula along the bottom portion and a comparatively clear upper portion. Speckled across both portions is a starfield, showing innumerable stars of many sizes. The smallest of these are small, distant, and faint points of light. The largest of these appear larger, closer, brighter, and more fully resolved with 8-point diffraction spikes. The upper portion of the image is blueish, and has wispy translucent cloud-like streaks rising from the nebula below. The orangish cloudy formation in the bottom half varies in density and ranges from translucent to opaque. The stars vary in color, the majority of which, have a blue or orange hue. The cloud-like structure of the nebula contains ridges, peaks, and valleys – an appearance very similar to a mountain range. Three long diffraction spikes from the top right edge of the image suggest the presence of a large star just out of view.

July 12th 2022

21,393 Retweets94,056 Likes
Twitter avatar for @NASANASA @NASA
Take Five: Captured in exquisite detail, @NASAWebb peered through the thick dust of Stephan’s Quintet, a galaxy cluster showing huge shockwaves and tidal tails. This is a front-row seat to galactic evolution: nasa.gov/webbfirstimages #UnfoldTheUniverse
A group of five galaxies that appear close to each other in the sky: two in the middle, one toward the top, one to the upper left, and one toward the bottom. Four of the five appear to be touching. One is somewhat separated. In the image, the galaxies are large relative to the hundreds of much smaller (more distant) galaxies in the background. All five galaxies have bright white cores. Each has a slightly different size, shape, structure, and coloring. Scattered across the image, in front of the galaxies are number of foreground stars with diffraction spikes: bright white points, each with eight bright lines radiating out from the center.

July 12th 2022

16,183 Retweets80,710 Likes
Twitter avatar for @NASANASA @NASA
Some stars go out with a bang. In these images of the Southern Ring planetary nebula, @NASAWebb shows a dying star cloaked by dust and layers of light. Explore this star's final performance at nasa.gov/webbfirstimages #UnfoldTheUniverse.
The image is split down the middle, showing two views of the Southern Ring Nebula. Both feature black backgrounds speckled with tiny bright stars and distant galaxies. Both show the planetary nebula as a misshapen oval that is slightly angled from top left to bottom right and takes up the majority of each image. At left, the near-infrared image shows a bright white star at the center with long diffraction spikes. Large, transparent teal and orange ovals, which are shells ejected by the unseen central star, surround it. At right, the mid-infrared image shows two stars at the center very close to one another. The one at left is red, the smaller one at right is light blue. The blue star has tiny triangles around it. A large transparent red oval surrounds the central stars. From that extend shells in a mix of colors, which are red to the left and right and teal to the top and bottom. Overall, the oval shape of the planetary nebula appears slightly smaller than the one seen at left.

July 12th 2022

15,167 Retweets69,418 Likes
Twitter avatar for @NASANASA @NASA
Space is lovely, dark and deep. You're looking at the deepest infrared image of the universe ever taken—the first full-color image from @NASAWebb. Go deeper on the galaxies of SMACS 0723 at nasa.gov/webbfirstimages #UnfoldTheUniverse
The background of space is black. Thousands of galaxies appear all across the view. Their shapes and colors vary. Some are various shades of orange, others are white. Most stars appear blue, and are sometimes as large as more distant galaxies that appear next to them. A very bright star is just above and left of center. It has eight bright blue, long diffraction spikes. Between 4 o’clock and 6 o’clock in its spikes are several very bright galaxies. A group of three are in the middle, and two are closer to 4 o’clock. These galaxies are part of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, and they are warping the appearances of galaxies seen around them. Long orange arcs appear at left and right toward the center.

July 12th 2022

8,622 Retweets44,116 Likes
Twitter avatar for @NASANASA @NASA
We've spent today looking across the universe, so let's wrap it up with something a little closer to home. Keep an eye on the skies for the Buck Supermoon, our next full Moon, on July 13: go.nasa.gov/3c2D6Xn
A full Moon rises in the twilight sky over the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, a large, classically-styled building with white walls and green, domed rooftops, perched on the side of a forested mountain slope

July 12th 2022

393 Retweets3,292 Likes
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