James Webb Space Telescope

bookmarked

this shit is just SO COOL god damn

It can see bees on the mooooonnnn!!!!

I knew folks who were working on this back when I was an undergrad in the early 90s. A lot of JPL and CalTech folks live here in town and every house was watching as if it was the World Cup.

I have a stupid question maybe - how big are these Lagrange points? Or are several probes we've sent there kind of orbiting around that point? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points#L2

apparently they are 500,000 miles wide

500,000 James Webb fans can't be... oh never mind

The Lagrange points themselves are infinitely small.

The telescope will circle about the L2 point in a halo orbit, which will be inclined with respect to the ecliptic, have a radius of approximately 800,000 km (500,000 mi), and take about half a year to complete.[34]

okay right, that makes more sense

ohhh, thank you for the explanation Kim.

successfully deployed, pretty incredible

I only just learned that this telescope is *not* named after everyone’s favorite one term Senator from Virginia who has killed men with his bare hands.

I assumed it was named after America's favorite songwriter, Jimmy Webb.

Long may it live and prosper! Because micro-meteors are a real thing.

Some people obviously haven't been reading a certain thread on ILB.

I assumed it was named after America's favorite songwriter, Jimmy Webb.

slowly but surely

https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/02/11/photons-received-webb-sees-its-first-star-18-times/

everything has cooled down to operating temperature now

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/Webb_s_coldest_instrument_reaches_operating_temperature

Cool.

I mean 😎

double cool!

very promising

“It’s full of stars!” ✨

This mosaic represents a sparkling turning point as we #UnfoldTheUniverse. #NASAWebb’s mirrors are now fully aligned! Next is instrument calibration, the final phase before Webb is ready for science: https://t.co/PcAxajyMfI

What do we see here? ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/qzdZRbsgRF

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) April 28, 2022

Awesome.

I'm so happy this is going well.

first round of photos july 12th. i expect to be astounded. glad we have this good thing to pay attention to instead of everything else. humans can do amazing things

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrBecky is going to update & explain (enthusiastically because that's what she does) - and this reveal is right in the middle of a big astrophysics convention in the UK too apparently, so they'll all be there together when the images are released.

oh FFS - that's a link to Dr. Becky's channel www . youtube . com /c/DrBecky

http://drbecky.uk.com/

President Biden is going to reveal the first picture today (5PM ET / 21:00 UTC)

https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/

Sneak peek:

https://previews.123rf.com/images/chudtsankov/chudtsankov1103/chudtsankov110300012/9152408-happy-star.jpg

so sharp! amazing!

well, they leaked:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Q9PBHF6BBC8/Ti3dHvAanwI/AAAAAAAABKY/2gw8vsYxOP4/s400/272125_1916953932973_1515720171_31784672_1940142_o.jpg

My first thought was "they have Pot Noodles in the United States", and then I re-read the headline and thought "what is a pool noodle is it one of those things is that Gary Busey?". According to the internet a pool noodle is a kind of thing that goes in the pool to help people swim. And it's noodle-shaped. But not noodle-coloured. It's pasta-coloured.

Why not pool spaghetti? Because it's hollow, that's why. Unlike noodles, which are... also not hollow.

Does this mean that the United States' Chinese-American population predates its Italian-American population, or is it just one of those things? The James Webb Space Telescope.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lgQUgBTiDy4/Ti3dRNmasRI/AAAAAAAABKo/J6Y8bNCJluM/s1600/photo%252814%2529.jpg

https://frinkiac.com/video/S06E01/G_mocPtGvzSSQxGc_-vyMcfwgsQ=.gif

Wait and watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21X5lGlDOfg

For anybody tuning in to NASA TV right now, this on hold music is Get After It by Andrew Joseph Carpenter, Mark Richmond Phillips, Marc Ferrari, & John K. Sands. #JWST #RenameJWST

— Kevin Hardegree-Ullman (@kevinkhu) July 11, 2022

That'll do

https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages

Holy smokes.

If you really want to zoom in

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/main_image_deep_field_smacs0723-5mb.jpg

Shocking news tonight as NASA reveals the first evidence that outer space is actually Star Crash-style. https://t.co/4IltD32TRg pic.twitter.com/FzlgRQV3UG

— Ben Lesnick (@banditloaf) July 11, 2022

all that gravitational lensing is so mind blowing to see

so fucking cool

also it seems like everyone i follow on twitter is talking about it which is kinda great

i completely discounted this before but i'm partially hoping the "UAP" shit that kicked off five years ago was prep for the JWST revealing habitable exoplanets/life. the only thread i have to base this on is bill nelson saying 'five years ago this project had budget problems that were resolved by [whomever's] leadership'. that directly coincides with the first of those crazy NYT articles

anyway yes i want to believe blah blah blah. if the universe is teeming i'll feel a little less bad about the collapse of organized human civilization

awesome

here we go folks

Amazing. I was even more excited to see how geeked my 10 year-old was about seeing even just that one image.

the other pics are (chef's kiss) too

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/albums/72177720300469752

if you click the download link (down arrow, underlined) you get a 314 Mb zip with the 5 theme pics

Does anyone know what the pixels captured by the CCD look like?

Jupiter:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/08/22/webbs-jupiter-images-showcase-auroras-hazes/

APOD yesterday

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2209/CarinaCliffs_Webb_1080.jpg

Stars created these cliffs. Specifically, the destructive winds and energetic light from the stars in the open cluster NGC 3324 eroded away part of a mountain of dark interstellar dust in the northern part of the Carina Nebula. Several of these stars are visible toward the top of this highly detailed image taken recently by the James Webb Space Telescope

in case anyone is interested: if you look up Carina Nebula, you don't necessarily see where that picture is located. This explains where it is:

Where are the “Cosmic Cliffs”? The Cosmic Cliffs, whose dazzling image was released by the JWST team yesterday, are located in the open star cluster NGC 3324, in the NE corner of the Carina Nebula, ~7,600 light years away.
1/ pic.twitter.com/mXbeXvLqGo

— AkaSci 📡 (@akaschs) July 13, 2022

great photos
wait but how do you have a NE corner of a nebula in space?

haha, they meant top right on the most usual version of the image, indeed

Neptune is dark in the IR - so dark that a long exposure was required - so long that background galaxies are revealed. Neptune is even darker in the IR than its satellite, Triton, which is covered in highly reflective nitrogen snow that reflects 70% of sunlight. Amazing! https://t.co/L7eUD51viR

— Natalie Batalha (@nbatalha) September 21, 2022

How the James Webb Space Telescope broke the universe
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/21/1065178/james-webb-space-telescope-universe/

Awesome article.

https://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2023/08/webb_captures_a_cosmic_whirlpool/25056954-1-eng-GB/Webb_captures_a_cosmic_Whirlpool_pillars.jpg

hfs

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2023/08/Webb_captures_a_cosmic_Whirlpool

The graceful winding arms of the grand-design spiral galaxy M51 stretch across this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Unlike the menagerie of weird and wonderful spiral galaxies with ragged or disrupted spiral arms, grand-design spiral galaxies boast prominent, well-developed spiral arms like the ones showcased in this image."

wow

Wheels within wheels in a spiral display

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R16yATW1_lQ

https://cdn.esawebb.org/archives/images/screen/weic2325a.jpg

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2325a/

A team of scientists has used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to observe an exceptionally bright gamma-ray burst, GRB 230307A, and its associated kilonova. Kilonovas—an explosion produced by a neutron star merging with either a black hole or with another neutron star—are extremely rare, making it difficult to observe these events. The highly sensitive infrared capabilities of Webb helped scientists identify the home address of the two neutron stars that created the kilonova.

This image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument highlights GRB 230307A’s kilonova and its former home galaxy among their local environment of other galaxies and foreground stars. The neutron stars were kicked out of their home galaxy and travelled the distance of about 120,000 light-years, approximately the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy, before finally merging several hundred million years later.

good god that is insane

https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01HDHHK4VETN6KYVPG8GRWHDCM.png

Definitely go to the release page and check out the full-res version of this. I'm still stunned that something like this naturally exists.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope have united to study an expansive galaxy cluster known as MACS0416. The resulting panchromatic image combines visible and infrared light to assemble one of the most comprehensive views of the universe ever taken. Located about 4.3 billion light-years from Earth, MACS0416 is a pair of colliding galaxy clusters that will eventually combine to form an even bigger cluster.

The image reveals a wealth of details that are only possible by combining the power of both space telescopes. It includes a bounty of galaxies outside the cluster and a sprinkling of sources that vary over time, likely due to gravitational lensing – the distortion and amplification of light from distant background sources.

...

Among the transients the team identified, one stood out in particular. Located in a galaxy that existed about 3 billion years after the big bang, it is magnified by a factor of at least 4,000. The team nicknamed the star system “Mothra” in a nod to its “monster nature,” being both extremely bright and extremely magnified. It joins another lensed star the researchers previously identified that they nicknamed “Godzilla.” (Both Godzilla and Mothra are giant monsters known as kaiju in Japanese cinema.)

Interestingly, Mothra is also visible in the Hubble observations that were taken nine years previously. This is unusual, because a very specific alignment between the foreground galaxy cluster and the background star is needed to magnify a star so greatly. The mutual motions of the star and the cluster should have eventually eliminated that alignment.

The most likely explanation is that there is an additional object within the foreground cluster that is adding more magnification. The team was able to constrain its mass to be between 10,000 and 1 million times the mass of our Sun. The exact nature of this so-called “milli-lens,” however, remains unknown.

https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/webb-stsci-01hhfqacckqgbjgghq12nnrr56-2k.png

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-rings-in-holidays-with-ringed-planet-uranus/

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently trained its sights on unusual and enigmatic Uranus, an ice giant that spins on its side. Webb captured this dynamic world with rings, moons, storms, and other atmospheric features – including a seasonal polar cap. The image expands upon a two-color version released earlier this year, adding additional wavelength coverage for a more detailed look.

With its exquisite sensitivity, Webb captured Uranus’ dim inner and outer rings, including the elusive Zeta ring – the extremely faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet. It also imaged many of the planet’s 27 known moons, even seeing some small moons within the rings.

This image of Uranus from NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope exquisitely captures Uranus’s seasonal north polar cap and dim inner and outer rings. This Webb image also shows 9 of the planet’s 27 moons – clockwise starting at 2 o’clock, they are: Rosalind, Puck, Belinda, Desdemona, Cressida, Bianca, Portia, Juliet, and Perdita.

In visible wavelengths as seen by Voyager 2 in the 1980s, Uranus appeared as a placid, solid blue ball. In infrared wavelengths, Webb is revealing a strange and dynamic ice world filled with exciting atmospheric features.

One of the most striking of these is the planet’s seasonal north polar cloud cap. Compared to the Webb image from earlier this year, some details of the cap are easier to see in these newer images. These include the bright, white, inner cap and the dark lane in the bottom of the polar cap, toward the lower latitudes.

Several bright storms can also be seen near and below the southern border of the polar cap. The number of these storms, and how frequently and where they appear in Uranus’s atmosphere, might be due to a combination of seasonal and meteorological effects.

The polar cap appears to become more prominent when the planet’s pole begins to point toward the Sun, as it approaches solstice and receives more sunlight. Uranus reaches its next solstice in 2028, and astronomers are eager to watch any possible changes in the structure of these features. Webb will help disentangle the seasonal and meteorological effects that influence Uranus’s storms, which is critical to help astronomers understand the planet’s complex atmosphere.

Because Uranus spins on its side at a tilt of about 98 degrees, it has the most extreme seasons in the solar system. For nearly a quarter of each Uranian year, the Sun shines over one pole, plunging the other half of the planet into a dark, 21-year-long winter.

(aside: still knocked out by the number of galaxies in every JWST frame)

it's dizzying!
The clean frame of the Uranus image is astonishing too:
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/webb-stsci-01hhfq0y3096sav5rzdhxnrsb5-2k.png