James Webb Telescope

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Who knows how incredible the findings from JWT will be - it has much better detectors than Hubble, and Hubble took the most important image ever.
 
Moooza said:
Who knows how incredible the findings from JWT will be - it has much better detectors than Hubble, and Hubble took the most important image ever.
Click to expand...

Are you talking about Hubble deep field long exposure. A postage stamp size part of the sky
with thousands of galaxies. That image just blows your mind.
 
We live in the golden age of astronomy. Highly specialized telescopes have been sent into orbit. Have made discoveries long past their projected lifespan.
Few I can think of

Swift NASA gama ray burst. Recording supernovas as they start in some cases, of course we see the supernova it happened back in time many light years away. Brightest candles in the sky.

Kepler looking for planets light shift as they pass in front of their star. Found that many stars have solar systems with planets.

Nova recently had a show on Gaia a EU space observatory that measures distance between stars and their motions. Making a 3D map of our galaxy.

JWT is a unfolding puzzle far out in space. If successful it will be worth the money spent.
 
Just listened to an interview about this on the radio. The earliest galaxies (13 billion years) are so red shifted into inferred that that an inferred sensitive telescope is the only way to see them. They said that getting everything up to working order after the launch will take about 6 months. Incredible!
 
There are some excellent utube video's telling how it will work, simulated launch showing it unfolding as it reaches orbital position to frigid
conditions. Light from Sun, Earth, & the moon
blocked aimed into cosmos.
 
Everything going well so far!

Thinking about the redshift. I had always thought that it was a light equivalent of the Doppler effect, but more and more I'm hearing people talk about the expansion of space stretching the waves. I can look at it one way and these two things seem to be one in the same, but in another way not.
 
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"The launch of the Webb Space Telescope is a pivotal moment -- this is just the beginning for the Webb mission," said Gregory L. Robinson, Webb's program director at NASA Headquarters, in a statement.

"Now we will watch Webb's highly anticipated and critical 29 days on the edge. When the spacecraft unfurls in space, Webb will undergo the most difficult and complex deployment sequence ever attempted in space. Once commissioning is complete, we will see awe-inspiring images that will capture our imagination."
 
I read yesterday that there are about 300 critical actions that have to go perfectly without flaw in order for the unfolding process to work. Really fascinating and mind bending for sure.
 
@Michi, great site, I have it running in the background constantly.

The distance to the Moon is so far, even at 1.5km/s it's going to take 2.5 days to get there....
 
Michi said:
Nice page here that allows you check what Webb is currently up to.
Click to expand...

When you posted this site put it on my homepage went to it every day. Sometimes great videos linked outside the NASA site

I'm stoked today the sun shield is deployed & today the 5 layers were successfully tensioned.

The shield was the most complex deployment
It is 👍

Thought I'd add a Hubble shot of Andromeda Galaxy. It's a canvas gallery wrap that I ordered
many years ago.
IMG_20220102_150139275.jpg
 
I am so fascinated by engineering on precision projects like this. The amount of design and consideration put into constructing the radiation shield is quite inspiring. The fact that they can calibrate each panel in the mirror is similarly stunning. What a precision instrument!

Webb will no doubt produce some fascinating data.

Interesting side story, time on these instruments is fairly shared amongst scientists. There is often a small portion of time known as 'director’s discretionary time' allocated to you guessed it... the program director. They can allocate it as they please - for instance, to intermittent/transient phenomena or interesting proposals that have not passed through the rigorous approval process.

In the 1995 the director of Hubble allocated time to himself (really a team) to image an empty/dark area of the night sky. This produced the first of the Hubble Deep Field images:

deepfield.jpg

[image source: NASA]

It is arguably one of the most famous and important Hubble images - illustrating that the universe is absolutely full of galaxies. And that the further away you look at these objects, the further back in time you are observing. Pretty cool!


You can read more here.
 
If you expand picture above near the center a bright white light with cross beams on it looks like attached to slanting brown galaxy. That is the only star in our milky way galaxy. Every other light no matter how dim is a galaxy.

Hubble did several deep fields Northern & Southern Hemisphere same thing thousands of Galaxy in a tiny patch of sky. They figure billions of Galaxy in universe. Webb will expand out view of the cosmos that Hubble started.
 
Luftmensch said:
I am so fascinated by engineering on precision projects like this. The amount of design and consideration put into constructing the radiation shield is quite inspiring. The fact that they can calibrate each panel in the mirror is similarly stunning. What a precision instrument!
Click to expand...

Move over, Kasfly sandpaper holder!
 
The speed is down under .25 mi/s vs. over 1 mi/s when I started watching, about 12 hours after the launch. The slowdown is fascinating to me. I'm imagining that it will be going quite slow as it approaches the La Grange point. Surely they won't stick with miles per second. I wonder if they'll go to miles per minute, then miles per hour, or maybe feet per second and then feet per minute.

Of course the metric equivalent is available too.
 
Sitting still at the equator your moving about 1000 miles an hour or 1600KM. Even in North
America or EU you are still moving hundreds of miles an hour.

James Webb has to slow quite a bit entering La Grange 2 orbit, don't want to over shoot it.😨
 
Keith Sinclair said:
James Webb has to slow quite a bit entering La Grange 2 orbit, don't want to over shoot it.😨
Click to expand...
Actually, the opposite is true. On its current trajectory, the telescope won't get there without doing another burn. The problem is that the telescope cannot slow down because doing so would require it to turn around, thereby exposing the cold side of the telescope to the sun.

Currently, Webb is moving too slowly to get there and the final burn will accelerate the telescope just enough for it to reach L2.

James Webb Space Telescope notches crucial maneuver to set its path
 
Know early burns talked about in that post were done early on to send it towards L2 gradually losing speed toward destination. I'll have to wait & see as do controllers as JWT gets near
L2.
 
It's scary since Hubble took a shuttle mission to fix it (optics, etc) and several later missions to resupply it. JW is so far out, it is unlikely there is the political will to mount a mission to fix or resupply it for 5 or 10 years. And it could be like Skylab that by the time NASA got serious it was in the atmosphere over the Indian ocean, except for JW it will stuck somewhere out at the LaGrangian.
 
Of coarse we don't know certainty, but saw one scientist say in ten years may have ways to reach, refuel, and other upgrades to extend JWT life span.

There is also talk of sending up pieces and building a telescope in space.

It took couple decades to get JWT to this point. Unlike Hubble it can be focused in space. Like a kid in a candy store, think images will be spectacular.
 
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