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James Webb Space Telescope And The Search For Our Distant Past


Tiberius

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To get our minds off other subjects, today is the last big day on the "journey" phase.

Webb will do an orbital placement burn that will slow it down and glide it into its' L2 parking spot.

 

From there, its final mirror adjustment, further cooling off, and get into its mission.

 

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NASA’s revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope on Monday fired its thrusters for five minutes and reached its final destination, a special orbit around the sun where it will spend the rest of its life scrutinizing the universe and capturing light emitted soon after the big bang.

The telescope has been cruising through space for a month since its Christmas launch from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana. The final course correction, the third engine burn since launch, placed the Webb in a gravitationally stable position known as L2, where it will always be roughly 1 million miles from Earth on the opposite side of our planet from the sun.

A NASA representative said the engine burn ended at 2:05 p.m. and worked as planned.

The high-risk, long-delayed mission, burdened with ambitious astronomy goals and a $10 billion price tag, has gone spectacularly well, overcoming an eye-popping list of potential snags that had haunted the dreams of engineers for years. More challenges lie ahead, but the engineers and scientists are breathing more easily.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/01/24/webb-space-telescope-final-destination/

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Beyond the fact that the telescope seems to have followed commands from mission controllers to a T, the launch itself and two subsequent engine burns were so efficient that the Webb did not expend very much fuel to get where it is going. The extra fuel will prolong the lifetime of the telescope by years, well beyond its official 10-year target.

 

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1 minute ago, Augie said:

 

I am strangely fascinated by all of this and eagerly looking forward to seeing what they get. The images from Hubble were nothing short of stunning! 

That one image from Hubble pointed towards "empty" space, showing uncountable numbers of galaxies that existed before the earth was even formed...my how small we are

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1 minute ago, Tiberius said:

That one image from Hubble pointed towards "empty" space, showing uncountable numbers of galaxies that existed before the earth was even formed...my how small we are

 

It’s funny how smart we think we are. We know squat about the universe or our place in it. Hell, we don’t even know much about our own oceans! Think of where we were just 500 or a thousand years ago in knowledge, which is a blink of the eye in terms of our universe.

 

The acceleration of our ability to learn more is exciting, but also causes some questions and concerns. My mother had an ice box as a kid. I remember party line phones and 3 channels available on the black and white TV with no remote control. Now, my 8 year old grandson can operate an iPhone or laptop to access most of the knowledge of mankind.  Whoa Nelly! And it just keeps accelerating! 

 

 

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1 minute ago, Augie said:

 

It’s funny how smart we think we are. We know squat about the universe or our place in it. Hell, we don’t even know much about our own oceans! Think of where we were just 500 or a thousand years ago in knowledge, which is a blink of the eye in terms of our universe.

 

The acceleration of our ability to learn more is exciting, but also causes some questions and concerns. My mother had an ice box as a kid. I remember party line phones and 3 channels available on the black and white TV with no remote control. Now, my 8 year old grandson can operate an iPhone or laptop to access most of the knowledge of mankind.  Whoa Nelly! And it just keeps accelerating! 

 

 

OMG!! Party lines!! Yes, that was crazy. Still remember my brother and me horsing around making noises on the phone and some kid, somewhere out there saying, "You touch my pee" lol. 

 

Things have sure changed. I had knee surgery in 1987. Huge scars on my knee, it was stapled shut. They do that now with much less work. When i was getting my procedure there was an old vet I was talking to who said he snapped his ligaments in his knee in 1941, they just kept him in the hospital for three days and discharged him. The technology curve is only getting steeper. 20 years from now things are probably going to be unimaginably different.

 

It's hard to explain to young people how we had to go to library and look up information, lol, and needed help finding it...if we could

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5 hours ago, Augie said:

 

I am strangely fascinated by all of this and eagerly looking forward to seeing what they get. The images from Hubble were nothing short of stunning! 

 

I read an article detailing its' capabilities if all goes well with mirror placement/adjustment the other day.

Because it "sees" the IR spectrum, it stated if Webb was in the same environment on earth as it is at L2, it could "see" a bumble bee on the moon.

Great things to come.

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  • 2 weeks later...

First light:

https://www.inverse.com/science/webb-first-photons

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n February 3, NASA announced the first particles of light have made their way through the entire telescope. This is the closest scientists have come to their ultimate goal: To use the Webb to image the universe as never before.

 

The achievement was confirmed by the Near Infrared Camera, one of the science instruments onboard, which captured the photons (the camera and Webb’s other science instruments were switched on just a few days ago). These data are critical for the next step toward Webb’s science mission and toward getting actual images we on Earth might marvel at, too. These NIRCam readings enable scientists on the ground to start aligning the telescope’s 18 mirrors to form a fresh lens on the cosmos.

 

 

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Not James Webb related, but an incredible feat nonetheless. 

 

https://scitechdaily.com/astronomers-watch-a-star-die-and-then-explode-as-a-supernova-for-the-very-first-time/

 

Astronomers Watch a Star Die and Then Explode as a Supernova – For the Very First Time

 

It’s another first for astronomy.

 

For the first time, a team of astronomers have imaged in real-time as a red supergiant star reached the end of its life. They watched as the star convulsed in its death throes before finally exploding as a supernova.

And their observations contradict previous thinking into how red supergiants behave before they blow up.

 

A team of astronomers watched the drama unfold through the eyes of two observatories in Hawaii: Pan-STARRS on Haleakala, Maui, and the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii Island. Their observations were part of the Young Supernova Experiment (YSE) transient survey. They watched the supernova explosion, named SN 2020tlf, during the final 130 days leading up to its detonation.

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Webb's first ever images are accessible.

As most know, it is using a specific star in Ursa Major, 240 light years away to align each of the 18 mirrors.

When directed where to look, each mirror got the star pretty much centered up.

The Near Infrared Camera processed them without a problem.

Now its a three month task to align them individually so all 18 work as a single unit and they produce one clear and focused image of target bodies. 

 

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  • Tiberius changed the title to James Webb Space Telescope And The Search For Our Distant Past
  • 2 weeks later...
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