James Webb Space Telescope

Tuckerfan · Jan 6, 2022

Tuckerfan · Jan 7, 2022

Tuckerfan · Jan 8, 2022

First light is in June of this year.

Tuckerfan · Jan 10, 2022

Tuckerfan · Jan 19, 2022

Webb hits L2 on Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

steve2^4 · Jan 21, 2022

https://www.theverge.com/22789561/n...-priorities-astronomy-astrophysics-exoplanets

Longish article on time allotment for Webb and Hubble.

Tuckerfan · Jan 24, 2022

Lanzman · Jan 24, 2022

It is very cold . . . in spaaaace . . .

Steal Your Face · Jan 24, 2022

It looks like it's straight out of Star Trek.

Tuckerfan · Jan 25, 2022

Not only have we sent something roughly the size of a tennis court a million miles a way, in just 30 days, but we can see it!

New Image Shows Webb Space Telescope Parked in its Final Orbit

The tiny arrow (center of image) points to the Webb Space Telescope, which arrived at L2 on January 24, 2022.

A robotic telescope in Italy has caught a faint glimpse of the Webb Space Telescope at its final location some 1 million miles from Earth.

The new image comes courtesy of the Virtual Telescope Project 2.0, an astronomical program that provides real-time observations of space with remotely controlled telescopes. The 300-second exposure showing Webb at L2 was taken by the 17-inch telescope “Elena,” which operates near Rome, Italy.

The $10 billion Webb observatory was approximately 1 million miles (1.4 million km) from Earth when the image was taken. Launched on December 25, 2021, the next-gen telescope has reached the solar orbit from which it will perform infrared astronomical observations. More specifically, Webb has reached the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, aka L2. This location offers a clear and unhampered view of the cosmos as well as a highly stable orbit that doesn’t require an excessive amount of fuel to maintain.

NASA issued the final course correction at 2:00 p.m. EST on Monday. The five-minute-long thruster burn caused Webb to move 3.6 miles per hour (1.6 meters per second) faster, “which was all that was needed to send it to its preferred ‘halo’ orbit around the L2 point,” according to a NASA statement.

Moving forward, Webb will need to toot its thrusters for a minute or so once every three weeks to stabilize its orbit, as SpaceNews reports. In what is brilliantly amazing news, Keith Parrish, Webb observatory commissioning manager, told reporters yesterday that the mission will likely last for more than the expected 10 years.

“You’ve heard numbers around 20 years. We think that’s probably a good ballpark,” Parrish said, to which he added: “We don’t think fuel is going to be on our mind as far as a life-limiting thing going forward.”

Webb is now fully deployed, including its sunshield and 18-mirror-array, but there’s still plenty of work to be done. Bill Ochs, Webb project manager, said mission planners “are now on the verge of aligning the mirrors, instrument activation and commissioning, and the start of wondrous and astonishing discoveries.” Webb is expected to enter into the science phase of the mission around June.
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Tuckerfan · Feb 2, 2022

Good morning, Doctor Chandra. This is JWST. I am ready for my first lesson.

NASA's James Webb is one crucial step away from taking its first images
It's all the way "on".

The time has come.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is very close to making its first-ever observation of the cosmos.

The telescope's Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) will capture its first images once it has cooled down to its operational temperature of minus 244 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 153 degrees Celsius), a report from Space.com reveals.

Investigating the early universe
After the cooling process, the much-celebrated Webb telescope will take its first-ever images. Specifically, it will train its cameras on a star called HD 84406, located 241 light-years away from Earth. The images will not be used for research purposes. Instead, they will help Webb's mission control team to align the 18 golden segments of the telescope's 21-foot-wide (6.5 meters) main mirror.

The NIRCam will stay trained on HD 84406 while the Webb telescope team moves the mirror in tiny increments to create a perfectly smooth surface. The process will be an arduous one, lasting until April. However, once it is finished, the James Webb Space Telescope will be fully operational, meaning we will start to gain new insights into the early universe, potentially habitable exoplanets, and potentially even alien life.

When will we get to see James Webb Space Telescope images?
The first images taken for scientific purposes by Webb are expected to be revealed to the public either in late June or early July. NIRCam's job is crucial to the $10 billion telescope mission's success. If it fails, the mission fails, which is why NIRCam is essentially two cameras in one, meaning it has full redundancy.

Webb's instruments, including NIRCam, will operate at incredibly low temperatures in order to observe the oldest stars in the universe, formed in the first hundreds of million years after the Big Bang. As they are so far away, light emitted from these stars is only visible in infrared wavelengths. Infrared light is essentially heat, meaning Webb has to be as cool as possible so as to reduce interference as much as possible.

The James Webb Space Telescope arrived at its final destination, the Lagrangian Point 2 (L2), on January 24. L2 is located 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth, and its position relative to both the Sun and the Earth means it provides Webb with a stable orbital trajectory from which to perform its operations. The telescope finally made its historic launch on Dec. 25 following a long string of delays.
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Tuckerfan · Feb 6, 2022

But soft! What signal through yonder telescope breaks?

James Webb Telescope Detects First Signal

After 38 days in space, NASA has confirmed the James Webb Telescope has detected its first signal.

The infrared observatory launched from the European Space Agency spaceport in French Guiana on Christmas Day last year. It's now entered the three-month process of aligning and cooling down before observing the universe.

Earlier this week, NASA confirmed that Webb team members saw the first photons of starlight through the entire telescope, which were detected by the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument.

James Webb Telescope Detects First Signal
BY : CAMERON FREW ON : 06 FEB 2022 10:36

James Webb Telescope Detects First Signal
James Webb Telescope Detects First Signal (Alamy)
After 38 days in space, NASA has confirmed the James Webb Telescope has detected its first signal.

The infrared observatory launched from the European Space Agency spaceport in French Guiana on Christmas Day last year. It's now entered the three-month process of aligning and cooling down before observing the universe.

Earlier this week, NASA confirmed that Webb team members saw the first photons of starlight through the entire telescope, which were detected by the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument.

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'This milestone marks the first of many steps to capture images that are at first unfocused and use them to slowly fine-tune the telescope. This is the very beginning of the process, but so far the initial results match expectations and simulations,' a NASA press release explained.

The telescope is cooling in order for the telescope to deliver its full potential in observing galaxies, exoplanets and other space objects, and it's why it's only registering individual photons in the detectors right now.

Once the 18 hexagonal elements of the primary mirror have been properly aligned, they'll act as a single mirror looking into the universe, rather than lots of little ones working independently.

'To put this in perspective, if the Webb primary mirror were the size of the United States, each segment would be the size of Texas, and the team would need to line the height of those Texas-sized segments up with each other to an accuracy of about 1.5 inches,' NASA explained.

John Mather, an astrophysicist who works at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, also broke it down. 'First, we have to find the images that all of those 18 different hexagons are making then figure out which one is which, and then start sending commands to the little motors that move the viewers around to get them in the right place,' he said.

'Then surely, we get them lined up so they do a nice sharp image with a near-infrared camera. Then we have to check that the other three instruments are also in focus.'

The images taken during this period of preparation won't be 'pretty', but they are critical in getting the telescope ready. For reference, the Hubble telescope launched in April 1990, and it wasn't until nearly a year later that we got the first incredible observations of Jupiter.

Due to the the mid-infrared instrument, which hasn't been turned on yet, Webb will be capable of 'beautiful pictures' as it works to 'solve mysteries in our solar system and look beyond to distant worlds around other stars', but they'll be different to what we've seen before.

'We can see into and through the dust clouds using infrared because the infrared will go around the grains instead of bouncing off. It will still be beautiful pictures, but it'll be different,' Mather said.
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Tuckerfan · Feb 11, 2022

Tuckerfan · Feb 26, 2022

It's a mere 1,200 lightyears away.

Former Astronaut Suggests Specific Planet for James Webb to Search for Life

NASA’s James Webb Telescope is gearing up to officially begin scientific operations later this summer. And scientists are already excited for it to start scanning distant worlds for signs of life.

There are plenty of places to look, of course. Researchers have already confirmed the existence of almost 5,000 exoplanets, with many more on the way. And out of an estimated 300 million planets suspected to harbor a “Goldilocks” region in which liquid water and thereby life could exist, NASA’s Kepler mission alone has confirmed several hundred.

Canadian astronaut legend Chris Hadfield has his own suggestion, opining this past weekend that Kepler-442b would be “an excellent planet for [NASA’s James Webb Telescope] to have a look at.”

Hadfield’s reasoning, according to a quote tweet, was that some experts actually believe that Kepler-442b — which is about 1,200 light-year from Earth, by the way — may be more habitable than our own planet.

In a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal in 2015, a team of astrobiologists argued that several exoplanets identified by NASA’s Kepler and K2 missions, including Kepler-442b, were highly likely to possess liquid surface water, like Earth.

“We ranked the known Kepler and K2 planets for habitability and found that several have larger values of H [the probability of it being terrestrial] than Earth,” reads the paper.

The researchers’ goal was to cut down on the number of exoplanet candidates so we could hit the ground running and observe the most likely candidates first.

“Basically, we’ve devised a way to take all the observational data that are available and develop a prioritization scheme, so that as we move into a time when there are hundreds of targets available, we might be able to say, ‘OK, that’s the one we want to start with,'” lead author Rory Barnes from the University of Washington told Wired in 2015.

NASA’s JWST will use various methods to take a close peek at the atmospheres of exoplanets orbiting distant stars. Some scientists even suspect it’ll be sensitive enough to spot atmospheric pollution from any alien civilizations lurking out there.

Regardless, we could find out soon. The telescope recently locked on to its first star, and is now calibrating its delicate array of golden mirrors. It’s our best chance yet at getting a close look at habitable planets outside of our own solar system.
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Paladin · Feb 27, 2022

I think we will detect signs of life outside the Solar system very soon (years, not decades).

Not intelligent life (though one can always hope) but life nonetheless.

MikeH92467 · Feb 28, 2022

Paladin said: ↑

I think we will detect signs of life outside the Solar system very soon (years, not decades).

Not intelligent life (though one can always hope) but life nonetheless.
Click to expand...

If we find any life anywhere of any kind, with the amount of potentially habitable planets that are turning up, there can't really be any doubt that intelligent life is out there somewhere.
Of course there is Hawking's caution that a meeting with a superior civilization (which we can safely assume would be the case) could end very badly and he cites as proof the clashes of technologically superior Europeans with less advanced cultures which turned into some of the saddest parts of human history.

Paladin · Feb 28, 2022

MikeH92467 said: ↑

Paladin said: ↑

I think we will detect signs of life outside the Solar system very soon (years, not decades).

Not intelligent life (though one can always hope) but life nonetheless.
Click to expand...

If we find any life anywhere of any kind, with the amount of potentially habitable planets that are turning up, there can't really be any doubt that intelligent life is out there somewhere.
Click to expand...

I think there will be life just about everywhere there can be, that, given enough time, it's an inevitable consequence of physics. I also think that intelligent life is a product of many very particular evolutionary steps and so is exceedingly rare, and that technological life is rarer still. So rare, we humans will never come into contact with it unless they undertake some engineering that's visible to us from thousands of light years away.

Of course there is Hawking's caution that a meeting with a superior civilization (which we can safely assume would be the case) could end very badly and he cites as proof the clashes of technologically superior Europeans with less advanced cultures which turned into some of the saddest parts of human history.
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If we're aware of the historical pattern, maybe we can break the pattern.

MikeH92467 · Feb 28, 2022

Paladin said: ↑

MikeH92467 said: ↑

Paladin said: ↑

I think we will detect signs of life outside the Solar system very soon (years, not decades).

Not intelligent life (though one can always hope) but life nonetheless.
Click to expand...

If we find any life anywhere of any kind, with the amount of potentially habitable planets that are turning up, there can't really be any doubt that intelligent life is out there somewhere.
Click to expand...

I think there will be life just about everywhere there can be, that, given enough time, it's an inevitable consequence of physics. I also think that intelligent life is a product of many very particular evolutionary steps and so is exceedingly rare, and that technological life is rarer still. So rare, we humans will never come into contact with it unless they undertake some engineering that's visible to us from thousands of light years away.

Of course there is Hawking's caution that a meeting with a superior civilization (which we can safely assume would be the case) could end very badly and he cites as proof the clashes of technologically superior Europeans with less advanced cultures which turned into some of the saddest parts of human history.
Click to expand...

If we're aware of the historical pattern, maybe we can break the pattern.
Click to expand...

Hopefully they will have some sort of prime directive.

steve2^4 · Feb 28, 2022

I've about given up on intelligent life existing anywhere.

Tuckerfan · Feb 28, 2022

Webb Telescope Brings a Star Into Focus as It Completes ‘Image Stacking’ Alignment Phase

That's a blurry image, BTW. They still have more months of fine-tuning before it starts cranking out the real stuff.

MikeH92467 · Mar 1, 2022

Tuckerfan said: ↑

Webb Telescope Brings a Star Into Focus as It Completes ‘Image Stacking’ Alignment Phase

That's a blurry image, BTW. They still have more months of fine-tuning before it starts cranking out the real stuff.
Click to expand...

I'm hoping they're ahead of schedule and will surprise with some sexy stuff ahead of schedule.

Tuckerfan · Mar 1, 2022

MikeH92467 said: ↑

Tuckerfan said: ↑

Webb Telescope Brings a Star Into Focus as It Completes ‘Image Stacking’ Alignment Phase

That's a blurry image, BTW. They still have more months of fine-tuning before it starts cranking out the real stuff.
Click to expand...

I'm hoping they're ahead of schedule and will surprise with some sexy stuff ahead of schedule.
Click to expand...

I've heard rumors that they spotted the largest object in the known universe and discovered that they're Velenskyy's balls. Still waiting for the official announcement on that one.

Bickendan · Mar 14, 2022

steve2^4 said: ↑

I've about given up on intelligent life existing anywhere.
Click to expand...

Especially here on Earth?

We Are Borg · Mar 16, 2022

Scientists giddy as NASA releases image of distant star, galaxies from James Webb Space Telescope

Those dots in the background are freakin' galaxies.

steve2^4 · Mar 16, 2022

More on this pic.
BBC.com: James Webb: 'Fully focused' telescope beats expectations.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60771210

Tuckerfan · Apr 13, 2022

Bickendan · Apr 16, 2022

7.15 Kelvin, damn

Tuckerfan · Apr 28, 2022

Tuckerfan · May 9, 2022

Jim, have you ever seen the like?

NASA Releases Ridiculously Sharp Webb Space Telescope Images

The Large Magellanic Cloud as seen by Webb’s MIRI instrument.

NASA held a press conference Monday morning to discuss the precise alignment of the Webb Space Telescope and the spacecraft’s upcoming scientific operations. The space agency also released images from the telescope that put Webb’s progress on dazzling display.

“I’m delighted to report that the telescope alignment has been completed with performance even better than we had anticipated,” said Michael McElwain, a Webb observatory project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in a NASA press conference. “This is an extraordinary milestone for humanity.”

Webb sits at an observational point called L2 nearly 1 million miles from Earth, where it will look further back in time than the Hubble Space Telescope. (Hubble will continue to operate alongside Webb once the latter is operational).

The $10 billion telescope’s primary science goals are to study how stars are born and give rise to planetary systems, to investigate the evolution of galaxies, exoplanets, and objects in our solar system, and to look at the universe’s earliest light, in the hopes that we can figure out how the first stars and galaxies emerged.

The preparation and testing of the telescope’s science instruments (a process called commissioning) will take about two months to complete. Only once the commissioning is complete can Webb begin taking the scientific images that will define its tenure in space.

But some images are already being collected, to make sure the telescope is functioning properly. Webb’s coldest instrument—the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI)—recently took a test image of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way that was previously imaged by the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope’s Infrared Array Camera.

Webb’s image of the same region makes Spitzer’s look like a finger painting, showing interstellar gas clearly distributed across the star field. The stars—blots, in Spitzer’s view—are seven-pointed beacons of light in the MIRI test.

“This is a really nice science example of what Webb will do for us in the coming years,” said Christopher Evans, a Webb project scientist with the European Space Agency, in the press conference. Evans said that Spitzer was useful for surveys of objects like the Large Magellanic Cloud, but (as you may notice) its images were limited by their resolution. Webb is way less limited. “This is just going to give us an amazing view of the processes in a different galaxy for the first time, cutting through the dust,” Evans said.

A section of the Large Magellanic Cloud imaged by the Spizer and Webb telescopes.

Webb’s Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSPEC) is also a big upgrade on previous space telescope technology. Evans said that older space observatories have only been able to see spectra one target at a time; NIRSPEC will be able to observe 100 targets simultaneously. That’s a boon for the many thousands of scientists all hoping to use Webb data in their research.

Webb’s next steps will focus on taking images of its science targets, known as early release observations. These will not only be the first images of Webb science targets, but they will be the first images processed into full color. (Webb sees the cosmos in the infrared and near-infrared wavelengths, but the images will be translated into visible light.)

Klaus Pontoppidan, a Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, said in the briefing that the chief differences between the most recent images and the ones to come are that the former were taken to test the telescope’s ability to see clearly, whereas the latter will test the telescope’s ability to image science targets. Pontoppidan wouldn’t elaborate on what Webb team will capture in the early release observations—the targets are a “surprise,” he said.

From these early results, it appears that Webb will be something of an intergalactic palantir, dropping scientists into various parts of deep space that were previously inaccessible. It’s the next best thing to actually being there for the universe’s infancy.

The telescope was designed to operate for five years at minimum, but its ultra-precise launch back in December means the telescope may have enough fuel to stay in position for more than 20 years. Buckle up.
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Jenee · May 10, 2022

Tuckerfan said: ↑

The Large Magellanic Cloud as seen by Webb’s MIRI instrument.
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This is going to change the way kids draw stars from now on.

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