Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted January 25, 2022 Subscriber Posted January 25, 2022 (edited) Quote With the James Webb Space Telescope now at its final destination, scientists can let out a deep sigh of relief. After just over a month in space (and decades in development), Webb is now at its observing site. "We're a month in, and the baby hasn't even opened its eyes yet. But that's the science that we're looking forward to," Jane Rigby, Webb operations project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said during a media teleconference on Monday. You can read Rigby's reaction and those of her Webb telescope colleagues in this update from today's teleconference by contributing writer Elizabeth Howell. Space.com Senior Writer Chelsea Gohd has this account of Webb's arrival at L2 with comments from NASA chief Bill Nelson and others. https://www.space.com/news/live/james-webb-space-telescope-updates Edited January 25, 2022 by CaaC (John) Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted February 1, 2022 Subscriber Posted February 1, 2022 13:25:27 - January 29, 2022 MEET WEBB'S 1ST TARGET STAR: HD 84406 Scientists with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have picked the first star they will aim at with the new observatory and it's in a very familiar place. The star, called HD 84406, is located in the constellation Ursa Major, the Big Bear, which is home to a star pattern you may know better as the Big Dipper. Webb scientists will use the star to focus each of the 18 mirror segments of Webb's primary mirror. HD 84406 is a sun-light star about 260 light-years from Earth, and may need binoculars to see clearly. Here's our full story on HD 84406, the first target of the James Webb Space Telecope. Also this week, Bill Ochs, NASA's Webb telescope project manager, thanked the mission team for its amazing work and dedication to get the observatory to its L2 observing spot. Ochs quoted Jimmy Buffett as he hailed the team, changing some key lyrics. Check it out! https://www.space.com/news/live/james-webb-space-telescope-updates 1 Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted February 10, 2022 Subscriber Posted February 10, 2022 (edited) Quote Paint it black: behind the James Webb Space Telescope's signature color NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has to stay super cool to observe the cosmos. How does it beat the heat? Black paint. As the agency explained in its new YouTube series "Elements of Webb," the James Webb Space Telescope's radiator is painted black to absorb heat. Just like how black asphalt gets hot in the summertime, objects that are black are generally hotter as they absorb all wavelengths of light and convert it into heat. (Comparatively, white objects reflect light and do not absorb heat.) Webb engineers use this principle to keep the telescope cool. Related: The James Webb Space Telescope explained in pictures Live updates: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope mission Edited February 10, 2022 by CaaC (John) Spacing correction Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted February 12, 2022 Subscriber Posted February 12, 2022 Quote 18:07:11 - February 11, 2022 WEBB MISSION TEAM ECSTATIC OVER FIRST IMAGES Today (Feb. 11), NASA revealed that the James Webb Space Telescope has captured its first images of starlight. And, while the mission team is still cautiously looking ahead as there is much work to be done before the scope is fully operational and ready to begin science observations, they are ecstatic. "After all these years, to actually see data when we're in zero gravity in space, it is emotional," Lee Feinberg, the Webb optical telescope element manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, told Space.com today during a news conference However, "We still are being a little cautious, because we still have things that we have to get through ... but I will definitely say when I went home Saturday night, two days later [after the image was taken], I know my wife said to me it was the first time she'd seen me smile since December," he added. Read more about the team's excited response and Webb's thrilling milestone here. https://www.space.com/news/live/james-webb-space-telescope-updates 1 Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted February 18, 2022 Subscriber Posted February 18, 2022 Quote Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor Is Guiding! After starting the mirror alignment with Webb’s first detection of starlight in the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the telescope team is hard at work on the next steps for commissioning the telescope. To make more progress, the team needs to use another instrument, the Fine Guidance Sensor, to lock onto a guide star and keep the telescope pointed to high accuracy. We have asked René Doyon and Nathalie Ouellette of the Université de Montréal to explain how Webb uses its Canadian instrument in this process. “After being powered on Jan. 28, 2022, and undergoing successful aliveness and functional tests, Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) has now successfully performed its very first guiding operation! Together with the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), the FGS is one of Canada’s contributions to the mission. “To ensure Webb stays locked on its celestial targets, the FGS measures the exact position of a guide star in its field of view 16 times per second and sends adjustments to the telescope’s fine steering mirror about three times per second. In addition to its speed, the FGS also needs to be incredibly precise. The degree of precision with which it can detect changes in the pointing to a celestial object is the equivalent of a person in New York City being able to see the eye motion of someone blinking at the Canadian border 500 kilometers (311 miles) away! “Webb’s 18 primary mirror segments are not yet aligned, so each star appears as 18 duplicate images. On Feb. 13, FGS successfully locked onto and tracked one of these star images for the first time. The FGS team was thrilled to see this ‘closed loop guiding’ working! From now on, most of the alignment process of the telescope mirrors will take place with FGS guiding, while NIRCam images provide the diagnostic information for mirror adjustments.”https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/02/17/webbs-fine-guidance-sensor-is-guiding/ Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted February 19, 2022 Subscriber Posted February 19, 2022 Quote The first image NASA shared from the brand new James Webb Space Telescope showed a star warped over 18 different images due to inconsistencies in the mirror's alignment. Just a week later, a new image still shows one star 18 times, but now the sparkle forms a sort of cosmic snowflake as the observatory's image has sharpened. Read more> https://www.space.com/news/live/james-webb-space-telescope-updates Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted February 28, 2022 Subscriber Posted February 28, 2022 Quote James Webb Space Telescope is nearly halfway through its mirror alignment stages By Elizabeth Howell published 2 days ago This animation shows the “before” and “after” images from the James Webb Space Telescope's segment alignment phase, when the team corrected large positioning errors of its primary mirror segments and updated the alignment of the secondary mirror. (Image credit: NASA/STScI) Stars are getting sharper in the James Webb Space Telescope's field of view. The team recently completed the third of seven planned steps to align the 18 hexagonal segments of Webb's mirror, marking nearly the halfway point in a complex, weeks-long process. The second and third stages were respectively called segment alignment and image stacking, representing larger movements of the main mirror. Subsequent stages will make more minute adjustments to take an image of a distant star and gradually bring it to a single, precise point, NASA said in a statement Friday (Feb. 25). https://www.space.com/jwst-nearly-halfway-through-mirror-alignment Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted March 5, 2022 Subscriber Posted March 5, 2022 NASA engineers are working on the fourth stage of the long process to align the mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope, according to a new statement from the agency. The observatory's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument has finished initial check-out and its three key mechanisms have successfully been characterized, the statement noted. The instrument will allow Webb to study the "fingerprint" of light of up to 100 galaxies at a time, giving scientists crucial information about mass, temperature and chemical composition. We're also highlighting more of the research that Webb will execute once science observations begin, including studying strange "sub-Neptunes" and evaluating how the activity of stars might affect nearby planets. Read more https://www.space.com/news/live/james-webb-space-telescope-updates Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted March 17, 2022 Subscriber Posted March 17, 2022 (edited) Quote Europe's star-mapping Gaia space observatory managed to snap an image of NASA's $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope on Feb. 18, when the duo were about 620,000 miles (1 million kilometers) apart, we learned today (March 16). You can't see much of Webb — it appears as a faint speck against a field of stars — but spotting the scope at all is a real achievement. Read our full story here. https://www.space.com/news/live/james-webb-space-telescope-updates 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." FULL REPORT Edited March 17, 2022 by CaaC (John) Spacing correction Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted April 4, 2022 Subscriber Posted April 4, 2022 Quote The James Webb Space Telescope has just one step of its seven-phase alignment process left to complete, NASA announced on April 1. The remaining step requires that the observatory's most heat-sensitive instrument, the mid-infrared instrument or MIRI cool even farther. That should occur in the next few weeks, NASA said, at which point mission personnel can begin calibrating the observatory's instruments. Read more > Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted April 8, 2022 Subscriber Posted April 8, 2022 (edited) Quote What’s the James Webb Space Telescope up to now? The very cool telescope is going to get cooler. After several months of nail-biting sky manoeuvres and some stunning initial imagery, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has had a quieter fortnight. The telescope is now chilling out – literally. The JWST needs extremely cold temperatures to operate properly – that’s the point of its huge sun shield. Without sunlight to heat it, many of the telescope’s instruments will be able to cool passively to between 34 and 39 kelvins (between -239°C and -234°C, or less than 40°C warmer than the coldest possible temperature). But one device on JWST – the Mid-Infrared Instrument or MIRI – needs to be at seven kelvins (-266°C) before it can do its job, collecting data in the mid-infrared range. “At higher temperatures, any signal that may be detected from the sky is lost beneath the signal from its own internally generated ‘dark current’,” explains Alistair Glasse, a Webb-MIRI instrument scientist at the Astronomy Technology Centre, UK, and Macarena Garcia Marin, a MIRI instrument and calibration scientist, at the European Space Agency. Why develop an instrument with such a fussy temperature range? It’s all to do with the range of light it can see with. “Mid-infrared light, as seen by MIRI, can pass through 20 times thicker clouds than visible light,” says Klaus Pontoppidan, a Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, US. “Because young stars are formed quickly (by cosmic standards, anyway) – in as little as a few 100,000 years – their natal clouds have not had time to disperse, hiding what is going on in this critical stage from visible view. “Webb’s infrared sensitivity allows us to understand what happens at these very first stages, as gas and dust are actively collapsing to form new stars.” MIRI needs more help than passive cooling to get cold enough – and the cooling process is a source of some anxiety for Webb researchers. “Over the last couple weeks, the cryocooler has been circulating cold helium gas past the MIRI optical bench, which will help cool it to about 15 kelvins. Soon, the cryocooler is about to experience the most challenging days of its mission,” says Konstantin Penanen and Bret Naylor, cryocooler specialists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California. “By operating cryogenic valves, the cryocooler will redirect the circulating helium gas and force it through a flow restriction. As the gas expands when exiting the restriction, it becomes colder, and can then bring the MIRI detectors to their cool operating temperature of below seven kelvins. “But first, the cryocooler must make it through the ‘pinch point’ – the transition through a range of temperatures near 15 kelvins, when the cryocooler’s ability to remove heat is at its lowest.” This process will need several quick and very carefully timed switches in valves and compressors, balanced so that MIRI neither cools too much, nor starts warming. But the cryocoolers have tested the process extensively on Earth, so they’re fairly confident it will work. In a few month’s time, when MIRI and the other instruments have cooled sufficiently, the real astronomy work can begin. “MIRI will be the last of Webb’s four instruments to open its eyes on the universe,” say Glasse and Garcia Marin. https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/james-webb-space-telescope-cooling/ Edited April 8, 2022 by CaaC (John) Spacing correction Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted May 11, 2022 Subscriber Posted May 11, 2022 Quote 11 May 2022 / Evrim Yazgin Compare the pair: James Webb telescope MIRI provides images of unprecedented quality A comparison with images taken by older observatories shows Webb’s stunning detail. Late last month, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope completed its seventh and final alignment phase. Now, all four of its instruments are in full focus and engineers have begun compiling test images. A test image showing the observatory’s full field of view is now being more closely examined and it reveals the power of the new telescope. The focus is on the image taken by Webb’s coldest instrument, the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). MIRI’s operating temperature is 7 kelvin, or -266°C – only 7 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. It is cooled by an innovative “cryocooler“. MIRI and the other instruments on Webb must be cooled because they are trying to pick up infrared radiation, which is experienced by humans every day as heat. The telescope has to be cooled so the instrument’s own generated heat doesn’t distort the images taken. MIRI photographed the Large Magellanic Cloud taking in infrared radiation with a wavelength of 7.7 micrometres. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way about 160,000 lightyears from Earth. The cloud provides a dense star field which is perfect for testing MIRI’s performance. NASA has compared the image taken by MIRI with a picture of the same target taken by NASA’s now retired Spitzer Space Telescope’s Infrared Array Camera. Spitzer’s image was taken at 8.0 microns. Webb’s significantly larger primary mirror and improved detectors gives us infrared images of far-improved clarity, enabling future discoveries. Webb’s MIRI image shows interstellar gas in astonishing detail. Emissions from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – molecules of carbon and hydrogen important to the thermal balance and chemistry of interstellar gas – are seen. Studying systems such as these, MIRI will provide new insights into the formation of stars and protoplanetary systems that lead to structures like our own Solar System. The full field view images were met with delight by scientists involved in Webb’s development. “These remarkable test images from a successfully aligned telescope demonstrate what people across countries and continents can achieve when there is a bold scientific vision to explore the universe,” says Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Scott Acton, Webb wavefront sensing and controls scientist at Ball Aerospace, adds: “These images have profoundly changed the way I see the universe. We are surrounded by a symphony of creation; there are galaxies everywhere! It is my hope that everyone in the world can see them.” After testing and setting up, Webb will begin scientific observations this northern summer. https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/james-webb-miri-comparison-detail/ 1 Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted May 27, 2022 Subscriber Posted May 27, 2022 Quote James Webb Space Telescope practices tracking an asteroid for the 1st time By Elizabeth Howell published 2 days ago The exercise will help the telescope keep an eye on objects in our solar system. NASA's next-generation space observatory successfully watched a moving asteroid as the telescope inches towards the end of its six-month commissioning period. The successful tracking of a nearby object shows that the James Webb Space Telescope can keep a watch on solar system objects as well as the distant galaxies, stars and other faraway objects it is expected to observe in its perhaps 20-year lifespan. "As we move forward through commissioning, we will test other objects moving at various speeds to verify we can study objects with Webb that move throughout the solar system," NASA wrote(opens in new tab) in a blog post May 19, adding that the observatory is "nearly set" to start science observations https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-tracks-moving-target Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted June 9, 2022 Subscriber Posted June 9, 2022 (edited) Quote Why is the James Webb Space Telescope such a big deal? The telescope has been successfully launched and is current self-assembling in space. But what’s all the fuss about? The new James Webb Space Telescope passed another major milestone over the weekend, deploying its primary mirror – the crown jewel of this long-awaited observatory. The mirror is a whopping 6.5 metres in diameter, bigger than any mirror previously launched into space. (The Hubble Space Telescope’s primary mirror is a mere 2.4m across.) The size heightens the sensitivity of the telescope – the larger the mirror area collecting light, the more details it can capture of a star or galaxy. The mirror is made up of strong, light hexagonal segments tessellated together. For launch, they were folded up into two “wings” to allow for the telescope to fit into the launch vehicle. But now they have successfully stretched out again. This follows the recent deployment of the secondary mirror: a small, circular mirror which plays a vital role in reflecting light from the primary mirror to the instruments. Both of these mirrors are covered in a microscopically thin layer of gold. This isn’t just to look fancy – it actually optimises them for reflecting infrared light. Rewriting cosmic history The most exciting thing about the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is its promise to revolutionise infrared astronomy. With a massive mirror and the ability to see light at the infrared part of the spectrum, it can peer back billions of years through history to capture the faint, red-shifted light from the very beginning of the universe. It will be able to watch the first stars and galaxies flicker on, probing the mysterious processes that took the universe from its dark ages and thrust us into the era of light. Astronomers have had burning questions about this early era of the universe for decades – for example, what were those first stars like? How did magnetism and turbulence play a role in triggering the first stars to be born? How did black holes first form, start to grow and become the hearts of galaxies? JWST has been purposefully designed to answer these questions and more. “Through deep observations, James Webb will reveal the very first galaxies formed in the infant universe and how those galaxies evolved across 13 billion years of cosmic time,” explains Lisa Kewley, director of ASTRO 3D from the Australian National University. “We will obtain an unprecedented picture of how galaxies like our Milky Way formed and evolved. We will measure how the elements responsible for life: oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen, formed and evolved across 13 billion years of cosmic time. James Webb will also reveal what elements are in the atmospheres around extrasolar planets. “The big questions that James Webb aims to answer are all about our origins and our place in the universe: Are we unique? Is our Earth unique? Is the Milky Way unique? What are our origins?” The very first chapter in the universe’s history has previously been hard to study because the only way we are able to learn about it is through light. As the universe expands, the light of these first stars has been stretched as it travels towards us, shifting it from more energetic waves of ultraviolet or visible light into the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum. “We cannot see a broken bone without an X-ray machine,” explains Nicha Leethochawalit, an ASTRO 3D Fellow at the University of Melbourne. “Similarly, we need near-infrared wavelengths to detect galaxies at beginning of cosmic time, and mid-infrared wavelengths to determine their compositions.” Unfortunately for us, this infrared light is the same thing of heat, and we have plenty of that on Earth, drowning out the fainter signals of galaxies far, far away. But by launching a massive infrared-sensitive telescope into the freezing expanses of space, we can capture the flickers of these ancient stars. “In the visible to mid-infrared wavelength range, JWST’s diameter is unprecedented,” Leethochawalit says. “It will detect the faintest and furthest source known to mankind.” The Hubble Space Telescope has been orbiting the planet for more than 30 years, but since it’s not optimised to study the universe in infrared, it hasn’t been able to answer all of the questions that JWST will tackle. In fact, results from Hubble inspired the design of the JWST. Hubble discovered that stars, galaxies and supermassive black holes were around far earlier in the universe’s history than we’d thought, and have evolved dramatically through time. We’ve also learnt about the role that dark matter and dark energy play in the universe’s evolution, and we’ve discovered thousands of exoplanets orbiting stars. JWST will tell us more about each of these things. The bigger mirror of JWST – plus its specific infrared capability and the greater distance from the heat of Earth – means that this new telescope will take infrared astronomy above and beyond what Hubble was able to do. So what’s next on the journey? Unlike Hubble, JWST won’t be orbiting around the Earth – in fact, it’s still en route to its final workplace, the second Lagrange point (L2). Here, at this particular point about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, the telescope will actually orbit the Sun – but while always staying in line with the Earth. It will basically keep up with our planet as it orbits, held in place by the gravity of both Earth and the Sun, so it will need relatively little rocket fuel. James Webb Space Telescope orbit as seen from above the Sun’s north pole and as seen from Earth’s perspective. This also makes it easy for its sunshield – which was also successfully deployed last week – to always protect the delicate mirror and instruments from the heat from both the Earth and Sun. The telescope has to operate at about -225°C, so this protective configuration is essential. It will take a total of 30 days for JWST to complete its journey to L2, so there are still a couple of weeks to go before it is inserted into its orbit. While this is happening, the mirrors are continuing to prepare themselves. They have already begun the necessary cooldown process in the shade of the sunshield, but it will take several weeks for them to reach stable operating temperatures. It’s a finely controlled process, with electric heater strips managing the cooling rate so everything shrinks carefully. As everything cools down, each individual mirror segment will be carefully moved out of launch configuration and into position. All the pieces need to be perfectly aligned in order to correctly focus on far off galaxies. This job is done by tiny mechanical motors called actuators attached to the back of each mirror piece, which can shift the pieces until they together act as one large coherent piece, producing sharp images. “Aligning the primary mirror segments as though they are a single large mirror means each mirror is aligned to 1/10,000th the thickness of a human hair,” explains Lee Feinberg, Webb Optical Telescope Element Manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in Maryland. “What’s even more amazing is that the engineers and scientists working on the Webb telescope literally had to invent how to do this.” Then, once JWST is in orbit and the mirror is ready, the scientific instruments will come online. But it’ll still take a full extra five months before JWST turns its eye to the sky for the very first time, as it will take time for the optics systems to be properly aligned and the instruments to be meticulously calibrated. “JWST is a remarkable feat of engineering, one of the most complex instruments ever built, and will demonstrate our capacity to operate new space technologies at more than 1.5 million km from the Earth,” says Simon Driver from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and the University of Western Australia. “Australia will play a critical role in tracking the Ariane 5 launch vehicle as it enters space, and later the routine downloading of the science data eight hours a day from NASA’s deep-space tracking station at Tidbinbilla, ACT.” Looking to the future Astronomers around the world are waiting with bated breath for JWST to begin its science program in mid 2022. “It’s been like waiting for Christmas for 20 years,” says Daniel from Monash University. “The first round of observations will be particularly special for our group at Monash as we have time awarded to image a baby planet we discovered in 2018. We’re hoping that a picture of an infant planet orbiting a young sun will prove one of the spectacular early results from James Webb.” But while some people have been waiting for decades, for younger scientists this will mark the beginning of exciting careers. “During the past few years as a young researcher, I have been learning about many of the current questions and challenges in astrophysics,” says Juan Manuel Espejo, PhD candidate at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University of Technology. “What I have found as a common theme in almost every one of them is that JWST will play a crucial role in proving answers and alleviating our curiosity for understanding the cosmos.” Claudio Lagos Urbina, from ASTRO 3D, adds: “I am so looking forward to this – as a computational astrophysicist, we have been making predictions for what JWST will see for some years and it is now the time to test these predictions and hopefully turn those new observations into a transformational understanding of how galaxies form, and especially, how our home, the Milky Way, came to be. “We are truly expecting a breakthrough in our capabilities of understanding the formation of the Universe.” https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/why-james-webb-is-a-big-deal/ Edited June 9, 2022 by CaaC (John) Spacing correction Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted June 10, 2022 Subscriber Posted June 10, 2022 Quote James Webb Space Telescope hit by tiny meteoroid A tiny rock fragment has hit the new James Webb Space Telescope's main mirror. The damage inflicted by the dust-sized micrometeoroid is producing a noticeable effect in the observatory's data but is not expected to limit the mission's overall performance. James Webb was launched in December to succeed the revolutionary - but now ageing - Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers are due to release its first views of the cosmos on 12 July. The US space agency Nasa said these images would be no less stunning because of what's just happened. FULL REPORT Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted July 11, 2022 Subscriber Posted July 11, 2022 Quote James Webb telescope takes 'deepest ever' view of the cosmos The first full-colour image from the new James Webb Space Telescope has been released - and it's a record-breaker. The picture represents the "deepest ever" view of the Universe, containing the light from galaxies that has taken many billions of years to reach us. US President Joe Biden was shown the image during a White House briefing from the American space agency. Further debut pictures from James Webb are due to be released in a global presentation on Tuesday. A $10bn machine in search of the end of darkness James Webb will be 'greater than Hubble' James Webb Space Telescope hit by tiny meteoroid The $10bn James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched on 25 December last year, is billed as the successor to the famous Hubble Space Telescope. It will make all sorts of observations of the sky, but has two overarching goals. One is to probe far-off planets to see if they might be habitable; the other is to take pictures of the very first stars to shine in the Universe more than 13.5 billion years ago. FULL REPORT 1 1 Quote
nudge Posted July 12, 2022 Author Posted July 12, 2022 Comparison between Hubble and JSW image of the same region: GIF: https://gfycat.com/embellishedselfisharuanas The Hubble one also took weeks, while JSW is only 12.5 hours of exposure! 1 Quote
Moderator Tommy Posted July 12, 2022 Moderator Posted July 12, 2022 20 minutes ago, nudge said: Comparison between Hubble and JSW image of the same region: GIF: https://gfycat.com/embellishedselfisharuanas The Hubble one also took weeks, while JSW is only 12.5 hours of exposure! It's like when you get a new PC and can finally crank up the graphic details in a game. 1 Quote
Administrator Stan Posted July 12, 2022 Administrator Posted July 12, 2022 These images being released are mesmerising and mind-blowingly spectacular. Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted July 13, 2022 Subscriber Posted July 13, 2022 (edited) Quote First Images from the James Webb Space Telescope Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI View larger version of this image The dawn of a new era in astronomy has begun as the world gets its first look at the full capabilities of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a partnership with ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency). The telescope’s first full-color images and spectroscopic data were released during a televised broadcast at 10:30 a.m. EDT (14:30 UTC) on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. These listed targets below represent the first wave of full-color scientific images and spectra the observatory has gathered, and the official beginning of Webb’s general science operations. They were selected by an international committee of representatives from NASA, ESA, CSA, and the Space Telescope Science Institute. These first images from the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope demonstrate Webb at its full power, ready to begin its mission to unfold the infrared universe. Carina Nebula /Stephan's Quintet /Southern Ring Nebula/ WASP-96 b /SMACS 0723 Edited July 13, 2022 by CaaC (John) Spacing correction Quote
nudge Posted July 14, 2022 Author Posted July 14, 2022 This is an impressive presentation of the latest images with simple yet detailed explanations of what we're seeing in each of the images: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-14/tour-through-nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-images/101231818 I must say the Cosmic Cliffs image of the Carina Nebula is blowing my mind, I can't stop looking at it... Do yourself a favour and view it at a full 14575 x 8441 resolution (only a link, as the image is over 120MB in size!) : https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G7ETPF7DVBJAC42JR5N6EQRH.png 2 1 Quote
Moderator Tommy Posted July 14, 2022 Moderator Posted July 14, 2022 40 minutes ago, nudge said: Do yourself a favour and view it at a full 14575 x 8441 resolution (only a link, as the image is over 120MB in size!) : https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G7ETPF7DVBJAC42JR5N6EQRH.png That's my new desktop background! Mindblowingly beautiful. 1 Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted July 14, 2022 Subscriber Posted July 14, 2022 (edited) 1 hour ago, nudge said: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-14/tour-through-nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-images/101231818 Love that link, some of the shots are mind blowing Edited July 14, 2022 by CaaC (John) 1 Quote
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ Posted July 14, 2022 Subscriber Posted July 14, 2022 Imagine this as you @nudge Quote
nudge Posted July 14, 2022 Author Posted July 14, 2022 13 minutes ago, CaaC (John) said: Imagine this as you @nudge I can't, there's no whisky in the image 1 Quote
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