Images

How data is visualized matters. The above image shows the fantastic JWST data of the Cas A supernova remnant with four different colormaps. Two of them (matplotlib’s rainbow and gist_stern) are relatively common in astronomy, with the other two being cmasher’s lilac and torch. While torch and lilac have uniform lightness gradients, the other two do not, meaning parts like the green in rainbow become overemphasized, while the other ends saturate.

Temperature in photodissociation regions is a delicate balance between heating and cooling processes. The dominance of these processes changes with depth into the cloud. In diffuse regions, heating by photoelectric emission and cooling by atomic oxygen and ionized atomic carbon is important, while in highly embedded regions, cosmic ray processes dominate the heating and cooling by carbon monoxide line emission becomes the most important.

Complex organics in ices can form through hydrogenation. The above image shows the timescales of the formation of complex organic molecules in the icy mantles on dust grains. The diagram shows the freeze out CO gas (red) onto the grain as CO ice, followed by the successive hydrogenation of CO to HCO (a highly reactive radical), to H2CO (formaldehyde), CH2OH, which rapidly finalizes in CH3OH. Annotated are also comparisons to human historical timescales.