# James Webb Telescope



## Keith Sinclair (Dec 16, 2021)

Excited about this. Certainly hope everything goes well. It's orbit is so far out any repair is impossible. 

Hubble changed our view of the Universe. JWT will expand it with much greater light gathering.


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## Moooza (Dec 16, 2021)

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.


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## Keith Sinclair (Dec 16, 2021)

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.



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.


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## Matus (Dec 17, 2021)

I keep my fingers crossed that it will all go well and we will see first images a couple of months down the road.


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## Keith Sinclair (Dec 17, 2021)

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.


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## VICTOR J CREAZZI (Dec 17, 2021)

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!


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## Keith Sinclair (Dec 17, 2021)

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.


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## VICTOR J CREAZZI (Dec 25, 2021)

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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## Keith Sinclair (Dec 25, 2021)

Victor if all goes well in about 6 months we should begin seeing images. Deff. something to look forward too.


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## VICTOR J CREAZZI (Dec 25, 2021)

"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."


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## Keith Sinclair (Dec 25, 2021)

Good to see a brudda who is excited as I am
Fingers crossed that it will succeed feel fortunate to be alive now to see it. 

Hubble deep field blew my mind decades ago.


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## Michi (Dec 26, 2021)

Nice page here that allows you check what Webb is currently up to.


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## Keith Sinclair (Dec 26, 2021)

Thanks that's a pretty cool site.


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## gregfisk (Dec 26, 2021)

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.


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## Moooza (Dec 26, 2021)

@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....


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## Keith Sinclair (Jan 4, 2022)

Michi said:


> Nice page here that allows you check what Webb is currently up to.



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.


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## M1k3 (Jan 4, 2022)

Another good source of pictures, NASA Image of the Day








NASA Image of the Day Gallery


NASA.gov brings you the latest images, videos and news from America's space agency. Get the latest updates on NASA missions, watch NASA TV live, and learn about our quest to reveal the unknown and benefit all humankind.




www.nasa.gov


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## Luftmensch (Jan 4, 2022)

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:





[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.


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## Keith Sinclair (Jan 4, 2022)

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.


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## ian (Jan 5, 2022)

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!



Move over, Kasfly sandpaper holder!


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## M1k3 (Jan 6, 2022)




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## Luftmensch (Jan 6, 2022)

So cool!

Better than sandpaper holder level of cool... Maybe even Kasfly ultimate sinkbridge cool??


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## VICTOR J CREAZZI (Jan 8, 2022)

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.


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## Michi (Jan 8, 2022)

VICTOR J CREAZZI said:


> Of course the metric equivalent is available too.


You are too generous!


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## Matus (Jan 8, 2022)

That is of course only speed relative to the earth. It s still hurdling around the sun with a speed approximately 30 km/s.


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## Keith Sinclair (Jan 12, 2022)

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.


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## Michi (Jan 12, 2022)

Keith Sinclair said:


> James Webb has to slow quite a bit entering La Grange 2 orbit, don't want to over shoot it.


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


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## Keith Sinclair (Jan 12, 2022)

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.


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## talcum (Jan 12, 2022)

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.


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## Keith Sinclair (Jan 12, 2022)

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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## Michi (Jan 12, 2022)

talcum said:


> 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.


It won't be stuck there for long. The L2 point is dynamically unstable and the telescope will drift out of L2 within about a month once its fuel has run out:

Stability of Lagrange Points: James Webb Space Telescope


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## talcum (Jan 12, 2022)

Keith Sinclair said:


> 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.


yeah 24 day to fall off local maxima, but should have fuel to stay at L2 waiting for fix or NASA could decide to let it wobble off to recover later. 
A little off topic from knives, but cool none the less.


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## VICTOR J CREAZZI (Jan 12, 2022)

Michi said:


> 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


Right, but presumably the amount of underthrust was minimized so to use as little fuel as possible for the final burn. I'm ready to switch to feet/second or meters/second.


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## Luftmensch (Jan 13, 2022)

talcum said:


> 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.



They designed the telescope acknowledging they had 'one shot'. For example, each of the mirrors can calibrate themselves so that they focus the light correctly. The Hubble mistake wont be repeated! But that introduces a bit of a contradiction.... although that flexibility makes it more robust to misalignment error (something that is _highly likely_ for telescope origami), the added complexity also adds more points of failure. That makes it quite exciting to watch it come online!

But you are right... if there is catastrophic failure, it will be unable to fulfil its mission goals. They will not send out a crew to fix it. As for lifespan? I have heard some scientists talk about sending out robots to refuel the telescope. This might even be a bit too 'scifi'... but it is more likely than a manned mission. It would be interesting to find out if 'dead-simple' refueling was built into the design to help facilitate the possibility of an autonomous refueling mission.


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## VICTOR J CREAZZI (Jan 15, 2022)

Interesting read on why it takes ten days to move the mirrors 11mm.






Mirror, Mirror…On Its Way! – James Webb Space Telescope







blogs.nasa.gov


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## VICTOR J CREAZZI (Jan 17, 2022)

So, it has slowed to 261 meters/ sec. I get that it's slowing due to mostly the sun's gravity, but I'm having trouble understanding what will complete the slowing as it moves close to the L2 position. Isn't L2 essentially zero gravity?


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## Luftmensch (Jan 17, 2022)

VICTOR J CREAZZI said:


> So, it has slowed to 261 meters/ sec. I get that it's slowing due to mostly the sun's gravity, but I'm having trouble understanding what will complete the slowing as it moves close to the L2 position. Isn't L2 essentially zero gravity?



I don't really know the answer to this... 

L2 is only quasi-stable. Solar radiation and interplanetary dust are enough perturbations (over a long period) to knock the spacecraft out of these stable points. Fortunately the decay is slow. But JWST isnt going to park on L2... it is going to orbit around it! This orbit is known as a Halo orbit. I believe they are doing this so that the solar panels will always be exposed to sunlight (if JWST just parked in L2, the earth would eclipse the sun).

Since station keeping is required, fuel has been budgeted to do regular corrections. I imagine they will use these thrusters to do any final maneuvering into the L2 Halo orbit... I could be wrong...


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## VICTOR J CREAZZI (Jan 17, 2022)

It was enlightening to me to understand that the instability of L2 was actually desirable, because the stable LaGrange positions tend to collect stuff. I think that you are correct that the orbit is to stay out of the earths shadow.

It's difficult for me to imagine moving into L2 without any negative thrust. Maybe they have a way to do this without introducing heat to the cold side.


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## Luftmensch (Jan 17, 2022)

VICTOR J CREAZZI said:


> It's difficult for me to imagine moving into L2 without any negative thrust.



Your question was interesting so I read a little bit more! I am not going to pretend I know the answer. But this NASA post has a big clue:



> the Ariane 5 launch insertion was intentionally designed to leave some velocity in the anti-Sun direction to be provided by the payload. MCC-1a similarly was executed to take out most, but not all, of the total required correction (to be _sure_ that this burn also would not overshoot). In the same way, MCC-1b, scheduled for 2.5 days after launch, and MCC-2, scheduled for about 29 days after launch (but neither time-critical), and the station-keeping burns throughout the mission lifetime will always thrust just enough to leave us a little bit shy of the crest. We _want_ Sisyphus to keep rolling this rock up the gentle slope near the top of the hill – we never want it to roll over the crest and get away from him. The Webb team’s job, guided by the Flight Dynamics Facility at NASA Goddard, is to make sure it doesn’t.



Since getting to L2 is like rolling a ball up a hill, rather cleverly, it looks like they designed the trajectories to only _almost_ get to the top of the hill. Like you mentioned earlier... the sun's gravity is slowing the spacecraft down. Without the thrusters, JWST would not quite reach L2. So they dont need negative thrust! Gravity is doing that job for them. They only need thrust to keep nudging it away from the sun.

I guess a lot of the final positioning will be done during the halo orbit insertion burn. But now you have got me thinking.... what if there is some major miscalculation and JWST _overshoots_! They are operating on the assumption that it does not. But it can't provide negative thrust... it will roll down the far side of L2!!! These space agencies are clever... I am sure they have thought about this. Although they won't be expecting it to happen, I bet they have some emergency protocol. Complete speculation from here: _perhaps_ they are just forced to reorient the spacecraft so that they can thrust back towards the sun. The cost of such a maneuver (other than fuel) might be another forced cooling period.


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## VICTOR J CREAZZI (Jan 17, 2022)

Wow that's a great explanation that answers my question totally. Thanks for finding and posting it.


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## VICTOR J CREAZZI (Jan 24, 2022)

The telescope has entered its L2 orbit.


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## MontezumaBoy (Jan 29, 2022)

JWST is (& will continue to be) very very interesting now that that science will begin but for those who haven't looked 'toward the sun' this mission (link) is one of my personal fav's .... the "polar opposite" in terms of challenges (hot vs cold) ... originally called the Solar Probe Plus it was re-named after the mathematician whose amazing work it hopes to better understand ... very cool given that the probe was renamed in his honor while still alive (1st time that has happened I believe). JHU/APL did an amazing job with this mission & continues to do so ...









Parker Solar Probe


NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will be the first-ever mission to "touch" the Sun. The spacecraft, about the size of a small car, will travel directly into the Sun's atmosphere about 4 million miles from our star's surface.




www.nasa.gov





Still healthy after 10 orbits ...


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## Keith Sinclair (Jan 29, 2022)

MontezumaBoy said:


> JWST is (& will continue to be) very very interesting now that that science will begin but for those who haven't looked 'toward the sun' this mission (link) is one of my personal fav's .... the "polar opposite" in terms of challenges (hot vs cold) ... originally called the Solar Probe Plus it was re-named after the mathematician whose amazing work it hopes to better understand ... very cool given that the probe was renamed in his honor while still alive (1st time that has happened I believe). JHU/APL did an amazing job with this mission & continues to do so ...
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Cool I mean  As said we are in golden age of Astronomy. 3.8 million miles from surface has a shield to keep it from getting fried. It's the only star we can study up close helps to understand others in vast universe.


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## MontezumaBoy (Jan 30, 2022)

Yeah Keith - for me one of the coolest things for me was the TPS. Incredibly light density / carbon "foam" along with other composite (carbon-carbon) materials and some very special coatings ... cutting edge material science at work.









Cutting-Edge Heat Shield Installed on NASA’s Parker Solar Probe


When you're designing a mission to touch the Sun, one key question comes to mind: How will you stop it from overheating? Parker Solar Probe's heat shield is a big part of the answer, and it was installed on June 27, 2018.




www.nasa.gov













Parker Solar Probe Heat Shield - Ultramet


NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will revolutionize our understanding of the sun. - Ultramet News




ultramet.com




.

Interestingly the shield is actually "moveable" during its flight so certain instruments are given line of sight when desired and shielded when not ...


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## M1k3 (Feb 26, 2022)

Webb Telescope reaches major milestone: All its light is in one place


A single dot means we're nearly halfway through focusing the telescope.




arstechnica.com


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## Keith Sinclair (Feb 27, 2022)

Webb has all kinds of camera variables to use in different types of views. Hubble changed our 
perception of the Universe. 

With far greater light gathering and camera capabilities we are in for some mind blowing images.


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## Wagnum (Feb 27, 2022)

It's honestly a little frightening to think of the changes to our understanding of life that this might bring about but I'm for it. I just hope the aliens are good looking like in Star Trek


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## VICTOR J CREAZZI (Feb 28, 2022)

I'm sure the images will be stunning, but the fact that they are images translated from wavelengths that we can't see makes them a bit artificial in my mind. 

In that regard I'm much more interested in the scientific understanding that will be gained. Fantastic project.


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## Keith Sinclair (Feb 28, 2022)

That doesn't bother me. We as humans have limited hearing, eyesight & smell compared to others in the animal kingdom. Wave lengths determined by our biological makeup. 

We create amazing instruments like Hubble & James Webb to expand our horizons.


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## M1k3 (Mar 16, 2022)

NASA releases first image from an in-focus Webb telescope


Distant galaxies come into focus as Webb is on track to meet or exceed expectations.




arstechnica.com


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## rickbern (Mar 18, 2022)

1st image snapped by iconic Webb telescope pushes limits of the 'laws of physics'


The photo is even better than scientists hoped it would be.




www.livescience.com


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## Luftmensch (Mar 30, 2022)

Did we have a general astronomy thread?? I couldnt find one (admittedly not a deep search).... Since this thread is active, you guys might enjoy this Hubble image of gravitational lensing:







[Image credit: NASA/ESA - galaxy cluster MACSJ0138.0-2155]

A bit old now... but remains as fascinating as ever!


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## Keith Sinclair (Mar 31, 2022)

Hubble images never get old unless you have no wonder & are half brain dead. This is on wall at foot of bed first thing see when wake up. 
Puts things in perspective.


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## Keith Sinclair (Mar 31, 2022)

That is an amazing photograph the gravitational lensing. So far away billions of light years away.


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## rickbern (Apr 13, 2022)

Here’s a choil shot of the sun

Edit, this is an easier link



https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter/Zooming_into_the_Sun_with_Solar_Orbiter











See The Jaw-Dropping New 83 Megapixel Photo Of The Sun Sent Back From A Spacecraft Halfway There


The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter took an incredibly detailed image of the Sun as it passed with 50 million kilometers.




www.forbes.com


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## Luftmensch (May 13, 2022)

More general astronomy.... 

The first image of the black hole at the centre of our galaxy:





[Source: Event Horizon Telescope]


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## Luftmensch (May 17, 2022)

Just a reminder..... there is a freaking helicopter on Mars!!!

Aerial view of Perseverance landing 'chute:





[Source: NASA]


For Where's Wally fans, you can see the shadow of Ingenuity (the helicopter) in the bottom of the image, about 2/3rds from the left


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## MarcelNL (Jul 11, 2022)

tonight is the night, first picture will be shared;









National Aeronautics and Space Administration


NASA.gov brings you the latest news, images and videos from America's space agency, pioneering the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.




www.nasa.gov





guess there was a need for some positive buzz ;-)


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## Keith Sinclair (Jul 11, 2022)

Thanks for the heads up. Have YouTube on Roku stick have already targeted it. Hopefully someone will post some images here for KKF members a worthy bunch.


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## MarcelNL (Jul 11, 2022)

guess they are still developing the film 

god forbid they lost it ;-)


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## Nemo (Jul 11, 2022)

Amazing detail.


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## Keith Sinclair (Jul 11, 2022)

Guess only one image so far but it is quite spectacular best images I found NASA site on Facebook. Also saw a Hubble picture of same area of sky difference is dramatic.

A lot of YouTube is politics & talk. More interested in images & what I'm looking at. 
Think NASA site will be doing that.


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## Luftmensch (Jul 11, 2022)

It is up now... Checkout the gravitational lensing:







[Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, from @MarcelNL's link]


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## Keith Sinclair (Jul 11, 2022)

That is so cool thanks! So much gravitational lensing. I ordered astronomy coarse my first science from great coarses many more followed. 

Covered lensing something about light from distant galaxies hitting a large gravity force like a cluster of large galaxies that bends & stretches light. That's an awesome mind bending shot


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## Keith Sinclair (Jul 11, 2022)

I count 12 stars from our milky way & beams from couple more at top edge of picture. Everything else no matter how dim are galaxies. Just a tiny part of the sky. As guy said today like a single grain of sand at arms 
length.


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## Luftmensch (Jul 12, 2022)

The subject of the photo is galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. They report this as being 4.6 billion light years away. The exposure took 12.5 hours. Imagine what they will be able to produce with longer exposures! Unless they havent crunched the numbers on other objects in the SMACS 0723 Webb Deep Field, it is not as 'deep' as Hubble. But it does have remarkable fidelity.

The original Hubble Deep Field was composed of 342 images taken over 10 days (I am not sure what the effective exposure time was). The oldest/furthest objects Hubble has peered at are ~13 billion light years away - again... taking many days to accumulate.

It will be interesting to see how far back they can look with Webb. Given what we learned from Hubble, we know the sky is absolutely full of objects... it would be cool if they could find a dark spot in Hubble's images and see what Webb can retrieve. I dont know if Webb can observe the same patch of space as the original Hubble Deep Fields, but if it can, reimaging that space would be a nice historical loop.


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## Keith Sinclair (Jul 12, 2022)

rickbern said:


> Here’s a choil shot of the sun
> 
> Edit, this is an easier link
> 
> ...



I missed this first time around. You have to check out the Earth to scale at the Sun's 2 o'clock. You can expand image of sun at that point to see earth clearly. Gives you a sense of how small our rocky planet is compared to our thermonuclear gas giant. Life giver to the third rock from the Sun.


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## Luftmensch (Jul 13, 2022)

Luftmensch said:


> Unless they havent crunched the numbers on other objects in the SMACS 0723 Webb Deep Field, it is not as 'deep' as Hubble.



Incorrect! The press just needed more time to present the information. The small galaxies in the background are around 13 billion light-years away. Given the universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years old... Webb is pretty much seeing back to when the first stars and galaxies light up. If you want to look at older signals than that, I believe you have to look at the microwave background - which Webb is not instrumented for...

More images coming:

Southern Ring nebula
Stephan’s Quintet (this image is bonkers. beautiful)
Cosmic Cliffs in Carina Nebula (always beautiful)

What an amazing instrument.


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## Nemo (Jul 13, 2022)

Luftmensch said:


> The small galaxies in the background are around 13 billion light-years away. Given the universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years old... Webb is pretty much seeing back to when the first stars and galaxies light up. If you want to look at older signals than that, I believe you have to look at the microwave background


The observable universe is said to have a radius of 46ish billion LY. Odd, given that light can't travel faster than the speed of light and, as you said, the universe is 13.8ish billion years old.

The discrepancy is caused by the expansion of the universe and has been exacerbated by the added expansion caused by dark energy.

Don Lincoln from Fermilab explains it pretty well (as he does many things):


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## Keith Sinclair (Jul 13, 2022)

Keep those images coming. The human brain is searching for certainty, where the Universe is infinite what is behind the observable space how can there be a finite end to space? The mind can't explain that it's a mystery.


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## Luftmensch (Jul 14, 2022)

Nemo said:


> The discrepancy is caused by the expansion of the universe and has been exacerbated by the added expansion caused by dark energy.



Hence the redshift!

I get the impression the Big Freeze is a leading contender as the ultimate fate of our universe? Wikipedia has collated the fate of the universe. It is beautifully depressing. In summary....

In about a billion years, the sun will become hot enough to evaporate our oceans. Runaway greenhouse will have killed off most complex life many millions of years before this event. By about 5 billion years, the Milky Way and Andromeda will collide to form a super cluster - 'Milkdromeda'. At around the same time, Sol will start becoming a red-giant. In 7-8 billion years, Sol may have expanded sufficiently to engulf the scorched rock that was previously known as Earth. Not long after, the sun will become a white-dwarf. The temperature of the planets in our solar system will plummet.

In 100 billion years, all galaxies within our local group will have merged into a single super galaxy. In 100-150 billion years, objects outside our local group will expand beyond our cosmological horizon. Light emitted by these objects will never reach us - they will be so redshifted that their wavelength become undetectable. Similarly, the cosmic microwave background will cool to undetectable levels. The universe beyond our local group will fade away into darkness. Our local group will be alone in the blackness.

In 1-100 trillion years, gas clouds will be depleted and star formation will end. Eventually all stars in the universe will exhausted their fuel. The universe will become extremely dark.

Beyond this, black holes will dominate the universe for an extremely long time. Eventually (1 googol years) all black holes will evaporate due to Hawking radiation. For pretty much the rest of time, the universe will be essentially be empty and exist in an extremely low energy state. 


Although that future is melancholic, we can be grateful that we happen to live in one of the most colourful eras. The night sky is full of light - we are still able to observe stellar objects outside our local group. And for this... I suppose we can thank our lucky stars


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## Nemo (Jul 14, 2022)

Luftmensch said:


> Hence the redshift!
> 
> I get the impression the Big Freeze is a leading contender as the ultimate fate of our universe? Wikipedia has collated the fate of the universe. It is beautifully depressing. In summary....
> 
> ...


Nice summary.

Reminds me of this episode of PBS Spacetime:


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## Pikehaus (Jul 14, 2022)

Few more images, nobody has seemed to post them yet here,
James Webb Space Telescope releases dazzling first science images 
You can find them in the article.


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## Luftmensch (Jul 14, 2022)

Nemo said:


> PBS Spacetime



What a great channel! Thanks for the recommendation!

Nice to hear an Australian accent as well... Viva la brain drain!


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## tally-ho (Jul 15, 2022)

Sorry this is in French but this is by far the more interesting video about the recent WST's images, he doesn't just say that it is very pretty.


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## Luftmensch (Jul 27, 2022)

Russia is leaving the ISS in 2024!

Apparently they have plans to build their own orbital station.

Pity, since 2000 the ISS has largely transcended global politics and has been a decent picture of international collaboration. That said the ISS is aging. I believe NASA is planning to crash it into the South Pacific in 2031!


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## MarcelNL (Jul 27, 2022)

Luftmensch said:


> Russia is leaving the ISS in 2024!
> 
> Apparently they have plans to build their own orbital station.
> 
> Pity, since 2000 the ISS has largely transcended global politics and has been a decent picture of international collaboration. That said the ISS is aging. I believe NASA is planning to crash it into the South Pacific in 2031!


something with ship, sinking and rats


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## chefwp (Aug 7, 2022)

From the distant galaxy, Alpha Charcuterie 








Top scientist admits 'space telescope image' was actually a slice of chorizo | CNN


A French scientist has apologized after tweeting a photo of a slice of chorizo, claiming it was an image of a distant star taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.




www.cnn.com


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## Luftmensch (Aug 22, 2022)

New JWST Jupiter images....


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## Nemo (Aug 22, 2022)

chefwp said:


> From the distant galaxy, Alpha Charcuterie
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I was sure it was Epsilon Cabinossi


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## tally-ho (Oct 30, 2022)

Pillars of Creation (MIRI Image)​




About This Image​NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s mid-infrared view of the Pillars of Creation strikes a chilling tone. Thousands of stars that exist in this region disappear – and seemingly endless layers of gas and dust become the centerpiece.

Contrast this view with NIRCam image.


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## Luftmensch (Nov 18, 2022)

NASA’s Webb Draws Back Curtain on Universe’s Early Galaxies
NASA’s Webb Catches Fiery Hourglass as New Star Forms


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