PORTLAND, Maine — This week, NASA released a stunning new image of Jupiter, made with the powerful James Webb Space Telescope launched into orbit late last year.
The almost three-dimensional picture shows our solar system’s familiar, red, swirling gas giant in a whole new light — literally. Glowing auroras extend high above both of Jupiter’s poles. Also, the planet’s famous Great Red Spot — a continuous storm so big it could swallow Earth — appears white, as do other clouds, as they reflect light from the sun.
The composite image was made using multiple layers of near-infrared light, undetectable with a set of human eyes. Scientists then translated the unseeable light, captured by Webb, into tones humans can look at.
It’s the latest in a series of spectacular pictures made possible by the state-of-the-art telescope. Webb has already given us eye-goggling looks at the Carina Nebula, Southern Ring Nebula and Stephan’s Quintet, a mind-bending group of five galaxies.
What’s more, NASA announced Wednesday that Webb had detected carbon dioxide — a possible indicator of life — in the atmosphere surrounding a planet outside our solar system.
But NASA hasn’t indicated when they’ll next release a new batch of pictures and discoveries.
Until then, earthbound scientists must entertain themselves with mere science fiction. Likewise, local journalists must look for any angle to fill their newspapers during the end-of-August doldrums, when every news source seems to be on vacation.
With those two things in mind, we asked four Maine astronomers to recommend science fiction movies to entertain us all in the waning days of summer, before Webb gives us more to look at.
Here’s what they told us.
Rob Burgess of Brunswick is the president and a founding member of Southern Maine Astronomers. At the top of his sci-fi list is “Tobor the Great,” a 1954, black-and-white cult classic about a robot built to pilot a spaceship.
“This was the future — big, scary, mechanical robots,” Burgess said. “I probably saw the movie when I was six or seven, just as we were getting into the space race.”
In the independent flick, Tobor is stolen by secret agents from another country and a boy with a psychic connection to the hulking piece of machinery must help rescue it from the bad guys.
“Tobor, by the way, is robot spelled backwards, which I thought was cool,” Burgess said.
Also on Burgess’ list is 1997’s “Contact,” based on a Carl Sagan novel of the same name.
In the film, a scientist played by Jodie Foster is given the means to transport herself to outer space coordinates sent by aliens.
“Foster travels to this predetermined space and comes to realize the extent of intelligent life in the universe, but nobody believes her,” Burgess said. “The movie is great for its sci-fi effects and its very intelligent portrayal of the kinds of social, political and religious fractures that society would face in finally learning we are not alone.”
Burgess rounded out his list with the Speilberg classic “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “The Martian,” starring Matt Damon and “The Blob,” a 1958 movie about a gelatinous, carnivorous alien with a healthy appetite for earthlings — including a young Steve McQueen.
“The Blob ravages the town, consuming all kinds of people, finally trapping three people in a diner. When a fire starts and firemen spray cold CO2 extinguishers The Blob shrinks,” Burgess said. “Eventually the army drops it in Antarctica and saves the world. As a kid, how could you not like this movie?”
John Meader is a science educator based in central Maine who runs the mobile Northern Stars Planetarium.
Meader said it was a tough question to ponder.
“I do teach astronomy and science, but I only occasionally watch sci-fi movies,” he said. “To be honest, it’s not a genre that I seek out.”
Like Burgess, Meader said he enjoyed “The Martian” and thought it got most of the science details right. Astronomer Ron Thompson, also counts “The Martian,” as a favorite.
“It had a lot of correct science built in, and was believable, for the most part,” Thompson said. “Some of it we really won’t know until we go there.”
In the film, Matt Damon’s character is stranded on Mars and has to grow food to feed himself.
Ed Gleason, the director of the Southworth Planetarium at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, loves the film “Blade Runner.” The 1982 classic, starring Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer, is based on the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick.
In it, a loner must track down artificial humans on the lam called replicants, all the while pondering what it actually means to be “real” or “artificial.”
Gleason remembers first seeing the film as a drowsy teenager, sleeping through parts of the futuristic film, set in 2019.
“I was then unable to distinguish between the movie scenes and my own dream figments,” he said.
About a year later, he bought a VHS copy of “Blade Runner” and watched it all the way through, from start to finish.
“I realized that this masterpiece of film was largely indistinguishable from the phantasmagoric,” Gleason said.
Since then, he’s watched it countless times and said it never gets old.
“It served as an introduction to metaphysical notions of being,” Gleason said. “To hear Rutger Hauer’s succinct, yet profound death monologue toward the end of the film is to confront head-on the existentialist angst that perturbs us all.”
In the film, Hauer plays the leader of the runaway replicants. Before his predetermined lifespan expires in a rooftop rainstorm, he utters an iconic, 42-word speech:
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
