James Webb Space Telescope

[6Foot2]

 

The James Webb Space Telescope arrived at the launch site in French Guiana following a voyage by sea!

 

The James Webb Space Telescope's target launch date is 18^th of December. It will be carried into space from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, atop an Ariane 5 rocket, which has been designated flight VA256.

[mikes]

Really hope the launch goes well, apparently this telescope will allow us for the first time to detect oxygen in exoplanet atmospheres within a few hundred lightyears of here. That means if we mess up Earth we can simply move planets!

[6Foot2]

Link: Blueprints of the James Webb Space Telescope [NASA.gov]

 

 

These blueprints of the James Webb Space Telescope were created as a prop for a video series, but since it was requested, we are offering them as a download! (Look close and you'll notice some of the smaller text is Latin!)

 

Webb is targeted to launch at 7:20 a.m. EST Friday, Dec. 24, on an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on the northeastern coast of South America.

 

Image Credit: NASA

[6Foot2]

 

Link:

 

Watch the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope—the most powerful space telescope ever made. This mission is scheduled to lift off at 7:20 a.m. EST (12:20 UTC), Dec. 25, 2021, aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

 

With revolutionary technology, Webb will observe a part of space and time never seen before, providing a wealth of amazing views into an era when the very first stars and galaxies formed––over 13.5 billion years ago.

 

It can explore our own solar system’s residents with exquisite new detail and study the atmospheres of distant worlds. From new forming stars to devouring black holes, Webb will reveal all this and more! It’s the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope ever built.

 

Webb is an international collaboration between NASA, ESA (European Space Agency), and CSA (Canadian Space Agency). Thousands of engineers and hundreds of scientists worked to make Webb a reality, along with over 300 universities, organizations, and companies from 29 U.S. states and 14 countries!

[Dos_Box]

Currently pinned to the TV, once it gets to space then off to pick up parents to go to brothers for Xmas dinner.

Fingers crossed for a successful launch and sending on its way

[Dos_Box]

It's away and in space, hopefully all the (many) next stages go smoothly.

Happy Christmas and well done to all those at the ESA, NASA and everyone else involved. Time to pop some corks!

[Andrew_C]

Expect to start seeing 'science' from about June, I gather from my astro-physisist step-step-nephew. Who has just got a 3 year research place at Harvard. Smart arse.

[Dos_Box]

Expect to start seeing 'science' from about June, I gather from my astro-physisist step-step-nephew. Who has just got a 3 year research place at Harvard. Smart arse.

 

I did hear recently that it may be 12 months before it cools down enough for the 'serious' stuff to go on (JWST needs to be as cool as possible to detect some emissions).

[Andrew_C]

(JWST needs to be as cool as possible to detect some emissions).

Working in the infra-red, any warmth in the instrument will swamp the signal from the earliest days of the universe.

[6Foot2]

Dead link.

 

That's annoying! Trying again:

 

[Andrew_C]

And that one is 'private'.

[6Foot2]

And that one is 'private'.

Even more annoying! Both were OK when I checked them before posting.

 

I give up on this one!

 

[6Foot2]

 

[Andrew_C]

Where is Webb?

 

https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html

[6Foot2]

Link: James Webb: 'Fully focused' telescope beats expectations - BBC News

 

 

The American space agency has achieved a major milestone in its preparation of the new James Webb Space Telescope.

 

Engineers say they have now managed to fully focus the $10bn observatory on a test star. The pin-sharp performance is even better than hoped, they add.

 

To get to this stage, all of Webb's mirrors had to be aligned to tiny fractions of the width of a human hair.

 

But the agency cautions that a lot of work still lies ahead before the telescope can be declared operational.

 

Lee Feinberg, the Nasa engineer who has led the development of Webb's optical elements, described the release of the first properly focused image as phenomenal.

 

"You not only see the star and the spikes from the diffraction of the star, but you see other stars in the field that are tightly focused, just like we expect, and all sorts of other interesting structure in the background," he told reporters.

 

"We've actually done very detailed analysis of the images we're getting, and, so far, what we're finding is that the performance is as good if not better than our most optimistic prediction."

 

Webb, billed as the successor to the famous Hubble Space Telescope, was launched on 25 December by an Ariane-5 rocket from French Guiana.

 

Its overarching goals are to take pictures of the very first stars to shine in the Universe and to probe far-off planets to see if they might be habitable.

 

To give Webb the necessary resolution and sensitivity to fulfil this mission, it was equipped with a 6.5m-wide primary mirror.

 

But this reflecting surface, made up of 18 segments, is so big it had to be folded to fit inside the nosecone of the Ariane.

 

Initial tasks since launch therefore have been dominated by the requirement to unpack the mirror and other optics and to get them all working in harmony.

 

Each of those 18 segments has had their orientation and curvature adjusted by small motors, enabling them to behave as though they're a single, monolithic surface.

 

"We now have achieved what's called 'diffraction limited alignment' of the telescope: The images are focused together as finely as the laws of physics allow," said Marshall Perrin who works on Webb at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

 

The alignment work was conducted using one specific instrument on Webb - its main camera system known as NIRCam. Engineers will now have to check this set-up works for the three other instrument packages on Webb as well. This may require some small changes, or even some compromises, with the configuration as it stands today, but any adjustments are not expected to be significant.

 

The star used for the test image released on Wednesday is nothing particularly special, just "a generic, anonymous star" with the right level of brightness.

 

Webb is seeing the star at a wavelength of two microns. This is in the infrared; it's not light that would be seen by the human eye. The red colouration is for contrast.

 

The "spike" structures were a function of the design of Webb's primary mirror, explained Prof Mark McCaughrean from the European Space Agency (Esa).

 

"The shape of those 18 hexagons imprints a faint diffraction pattern that makes bright stars look like spiky snowflakes - this isn't a problem for the science, but will give Webb images a very distinctive look," he told BBC News.

 

"Indeed, the fact that we can see those spikes so crisply also confirms that the mirrors have been perfectly lined up - this is brilliant news."

 

Take a closer look at the background features in the image. The oval shapes are great galaxies of stars that are probably billions of light-years away.

 

It's important to remember that this is a test image made for engineering purposes. The glorious vistas of the cosmos, like those Hubble has spoiled us with these past 30 years, will come later in the summer when science operations begin.

 

"The engineering images that we see today are as sharp and as crisp as the images that Hubble can take, but are at a wavelength of light that is totally invisible to Hubble," said Jane Rigby from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

 

"So this is making the invisible Universe snap into very, very sharp focus."

 

The James Webb Space Telescope is a joint endeavour of the US, European and Canadian space agencies.

[6Foot2]

Link: James Webb Space Telescope was hit by a tiny space rock – but it’s OK | New Scientist

 

One of the mirrors of NASA’s huge new space observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, was hit by a small space rock larger than anything they tested it with on the ground.

 

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been struck by a small space rock. A micrometeoroid hit one of the telescope’s main mirrors between 23 and 25 May, but the NASA team that operates it doesn’t expect the impact to significantly affect the observatory’s data.

 

JWST launched at the end of 2021 and reached its permanent orbit in January. Since then, the engineering team has been preparing the telescope’s instruments for science observations. The most delicate and finicky part of the observatory is its primary mirror, which is made up of 18 smaller, hexagonal mirrors coated in gold.

 

The solar system is full of micrometeoroids, most about the size of a grain of dust, so one hitting JWST is not unexpected. The mirrors were designed to withstand small impacts, and were tested before the spacecraft launched.

 

However, the one that hit the telescope in May was larger than anything the NASA team tested or simulated on the ground, and because it was not part of a meteor shower, nobody predicted it. Had they done so, the telescope’s operators would have been able to turn it to avoid a direct impact.

 

“Since launch, we have had four smaller measurable micrometeoroid strikes that were consistent with expectations, and this one more recently that is larger than our degradation predictions assumed,” said JWST team member Lee Feinberg at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in an official blog post published on 8 June. “We will use this flight data to update our analysis of performance over time and also develop operational approaches to assure we maximise the imaging performance of Webb to the best extent possible for many years to come.”

 

While the effect of this impact on the data is significant enough to be detectable, the observatory team found that the telescope’s future images won’t be degraded too badly. For now, JWST is still performing well above the level that is required for its planned science observations, including those of the early universe and the very first galaxies.

[Andrew_C]

1st images due 12th July

[Dos_Box]

1st images due 12th July

 

Oooh, I can't wait to see what those first images are going to look like!

[kevin_lane]

Yea should be interesting, be good to see how far back it goes

 

Or we just get a white horizontal line lol [emoji23] gone to far

[jthompson]

Well, the first images from Webb have been released. That first deep field image in particular is blowing my mind. I know that the universe is incomprehensively vast, but still, to have all of that in such a tiny region of sky (a grain of sand held at arm's length) is dizzying.

 

It reminds me of when I first entered the galaxy map in Elite Dangerous. Up until now that was the best demonstration of the vastness of the cosmos that I've experienced. To think that that entire galaxy map of the Milky Way in ED is repeated in the way the deep field image from Webb shows is... yeah, mind blowing.

[6Foot2]

Link: NASA’s Webb Delivers Deepest Infrared Image of Universe Yet | NASA

 

 

...This deep field, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours – achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope’s deepest fields, which took weeks. And this is only the beginning...

 

Amazing!

 

[mikes]

Looking forward to exoplanet atmospheres, who knows in under 10 years we might get confirmation that oxygen has been found in an old exoplanet, basically proof that life exists on another planet. I wonder how news like that would change the world, I wonder if we'd start planning a mission there? (if it's 40ly away, a small laser-sail cubesat may get there in a few hundred years... such a shame space is so BIG)

[6Foot2]

Looking forward to exoplanet atmospheres, who knows in under 10 years we might get confirmation that oxygen has been found in an old exoplanet, basically proof that life exists on another planet. I wonder how news like that would change the world, I wonder if we'd start planning a mission there? (if it's 40ly away, a small laser-sail cubesat may get there in a few hundred years... such a shame space is so BIG)

 

Some other factors influencing existence/non-existence of life (aside from oxygen)

 

Liquid water, planet in the habitable zone of the host star, ability to hold an atmosphere against host star's solar wind (thus should have a molten core so that it can generate a magnetic field) host star should be (reasonably) stable...

[Rob_D]

Looks like you can download the telescope data yourself

[jthompson]

I'd be interested to know how usage of space telescopes is administered. The logistics of the thing must be mega. I'm guessing that it's just a bit more sophisticated than the kinds of Google Forms/Sharepoint lists that we're all accustomed to having to throw together in schools. An entire planet's worth of scientists all needing to use the same one thing, perhaps at a time that they won't know until they get to use it. How do you get it pointed at what you want it pointed at?