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Hubble, Webb, Chandra, and other Telescope Images

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RTH10260
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#26

Post by RTH10260 »

cause it's Christmas, a bit more this time ;)
Nasa launches $10bn James Webb space telescope
Successor to the Hubble telescope takes off on board rocket from ESA’s launch base in French Guiana

Robin McKie
Sat 25 Dec 2021 12.25 GMT

The most ambitious, costly robot probe ever built, the $10bn James Webb telescope, has been blasted into space on top of a giant European rocket.

Engineers reported on Saturday that the observatory – which has been plagued by decades of delays and huge cost overruns – was operating perfectly after going through the most nervously watched lift-off in the history of uncrewed space exploration.

Described as a “time machine” by scientists, the telescope will allow astronomers to study the beginning of the universe shortly after the big bang, 13.8 billion years ago, and to hunt for signs of life-supporting planets in our own galaxy.

“We have delivered a Christmas gift to humanity,” said the European Space Agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher. “With this telescope we are enabling new science. This was a special moment, nerve-racking but successful in the end.” This point was backed by Nasa’s administrator, Bill Nelson. “It’s going to give us a better understanding of our universe and our place in it: who we are, what we are, the search that’s eternal.”

The James Webb telescope began its journey into space at exactly 12.20 GMT when the solid fuel boosters of its huge Ariane 5 launcher were ignited. On top of a fiery plume of thick smoke, the rocket rose above the tropical rainforest that surrounds the Esa centre in Kourou, French Guiana, and within a minute had disappeared into the thick clouds overhead.

After 27 minutes of powered flight, the telescope separated from its launcher’s upper stage and was placed precisely into its planned trajectory. The manoeuvre was greeted with tumultuous applause from flight controllers in Kourou. Jubilant scientists – some wearing Santa hats – hugged each other and held up signs that read “Bon Voyage Webb”.

Once in orbit, the telescope’s solar arrays were unfurled and the observatory began its million-mile voyage to its final destination, a region of deep space where it can be kept stationary in roughly the same position in the sky. Cameras on the rocket’s upper stage provided one last glimpse of the shimmering telescope before it sped into deep space.

Designed as a replacement for the Hubble space telescope – still in operation after its 1990 launch – the James Webb telescope is a far bigger and much more complex instrument with many more ambitious goals. For a start, it will not study the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum – as does the Hubble and most ground-based telescopes – but only infra-red radiation. As a result, it has had to be fitted with complex shielding and cooling equipment to hide its instruments from solar radiation that would otherwise trigger spurious signals.

The James Webb – named after a former Nasa administrator – will spend a month on its journey and will then need a further five months to get ready. First, its enormous gold-plated 6.5 metre mirror and its huge, tennis-court-sized sunshield need to unfurl; they were folded origami-style to fit into the nose cone of the Ariane 5. Then its instruments will have to be carefully calibrated. In all, hundreds of release mechanisms need to work perfectly in order for the telescope to succeed. “Like nothing we’ve done before,” said Nasa programme director Greg Robinson.

The observatory – built by Nasa with European and Canadian collaboration – has been designed to revolutionise our study of the universe. Among the hopes of astronomers is the prospect of imaging the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang, understanding how stars are born and evolve, and investigating the potential for life to appear in planetary systems. All this will have to be done in a decade, the maximum likely lifetime of the James Webb. After 10 years, it is expected that it will run out of fuel and slowly drift off course – to become the most expensive piece of space junk ever built.




https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... -telescope
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Reality Check
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#27

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I watched the launch live steaming on YT this morning. You could see the visible relief on the controllers faces when the launch went off well.
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notorial dissent
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#28

Post by notorial dissent »

I am wishing them well, this could really be a momentous event, of astronomical proportions-pun intended, or one of the costliest flubs in history.
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#29

Post by Reality Check »

notorial dissent wrote: Sat Dec 25, 2021 12:50 pm I am wishing them well, this could really be a momentous event, of astronomical proportions-pun intended, or one of the costliest flubs in history.
I was watching the trajectory and it was disconcerting to see that it got up over 200 km then started dropping down to under 190 km. It was actually right on course though. Once the third stage burn began though it took off like a rocket! (pun intended :lol: )
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#30

Post by Foggy »

The telescope is awesome, but nerve-racking is a homophone. It's nerve-wracking, thank you very much.
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#31

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re racking - let's Apple just do it's Jobs
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#32

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2021 ... into-space


All Arkansas astrophysicist Amber Straughn wants for Christmas is to launch a $10 billion golden telescope into space
Fromm Bee Branch, Arkansas.
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#33

Post by Suranis »

First images from the James Webb telescope have been released.
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#34

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

You are SO bad!
"Mickey Mouse and I grew up together." - Ruthie Tompson, Disney animation checker and scene planner and one of the first women to become a member of the International Photographers Union in 1952.
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#35

Post by PaulG »

In case you want to check in with the James Webb Space Telescope. It's 4 days into its 29 day jump shot on a million mile hoop.
NASA has a page. Amazing detailed, all animations and descriptions and info. I'm weirdly fascinated by the speed which keeps dropping. JWST started off at nearly 10km/s, but it has dropped down by now to 0.88km/s. The last week to L2 is going to go by at a crawl.
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#36

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Webb telescope successfully unfurls its tennis court-size sunshield in space

By Ashley Strickland, CNN
Updated 2016 GMT (0416 HKT) January 4, 2022


The James Webb Space Telescope, which launched on Christmas Day, successfully completed the deployment of its 70-foot (21-meter) sunshield on Tuesday. This critical milestone is one of several that must occur for the NASA observatory to function properly in space, and having achieved it was a big relief for the Webb team.
"Unfolding Webb's sunshield in space is an incredible milestone, crucial to the success of the mission," said Gregory L. Robinson, Webb's program director at NASA Headquarters, in a statement. "Thousands of parts had to work with precision for this marvel of engineering to fully unfurl. The team has accomplished an audacious feat with the complexity of this deployment -- one of the boldest undertakings yet for Webb."
It's one of the most challenging spacecraft deployments NASA has ever attempted, according to the agency.



https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/04/worl ... index.html
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#37

Post by Foggy »

:like:
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#38

Post by Estiveo »

The JWST has finished unpacking itself and all of the two gajillion, four hundred bazillion & elebenty-twelve things that could've gone wrong mechanically...didn't.

So all that remains now is getting the rest of the way to L2, finish cooling down to optimal brrr, and taking some pitchers.


Estiveoshot_20220109_085938.jpg
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#39

Post by RTH10260 »

re Lagrange Points, cause I had to look it up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#40

Post by Estiveo »

The JWST is almost there! In the next day and a half or so it should slide into its halo orbit around L2. To give you an idea of the literally astronomical scale of that orbit, it's comparable to the size of the orbit of the Moon around Earth.

Space is big.
Estiveoshot_20220123_074757.jpg
The mirrors are all deployed and will be going through micron level adjustments for some time as the whole telescope continues to cool down.
Estiveoshot_20220123_080536.jpg
We're still looking at a June/July time frame for the first pics to be released :waiting: but things are moving right along.

https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunc ... sWebb.html
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#41

Post by Foggy »

I wonder if we can turn it around, point it at the Earth, and get some great photos of Russia invading Ukraine. :think: :confuzzled:
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#42

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Foggy wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 11:44 am I wonder if we can turn it around, point it at the Earth, and get some great photos of Russia invading Ukraine. :think: :confuzzled:
:lol:

Actually they cannot turn the JWST around. The sun would fry the instruments. It was intentionally launched with slightly less boost than was needed to get to L2 so that the final burn could be made with the JWST pointing away from the sin.
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#43

Post by RTH10260 »

Foggy wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 11:44 am I wonder if we can turn it around, point it at the Earth, and get some great photos of Russia invading Ukraine. :think: :confuzzled:
Hmmm - blast those batards into oblivion and conduct a postmortem by satellite :twisted:
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

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Estiveoshot_20220124_123031.jpg
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#46

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Another big step completed. I have been watching the JWST progress on these live YouTube channels all month. It is like watching paint dry yet oddly engaging paint. :lol:

The JWST folks are saying it will be six months before meaningful scientific images will be coming down from the telescope. So waiting is the name of the game.
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#47

Post by Estiveo »

Cool little animation of how the L2 halo orbit works.

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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#48

Post by Gene Kooper »

Reality Check wrote: Mon Jan 24, 2022 3:36 pm The JWST folks are saying it will be six months before meaningful scientific images will be coming down from the telescope. So waiting is the name of the game.
Yes, we will wait until the last of the micrometer-level adjustments are made to the mirror segments until they form a perfect parabola.

And Estiveo, it truly is rocket science to accurately compute how hard to throw the telescope from the Earth so that it reaches L2 with a small residual velocity so that they only have to "tap the brakes" to secure it in place. In fact, NASA said that the booster rocket did its job so well that they expended only a portion of the fuel, thereby increasing the mission time of the telescope.

Quite the feat. I can't wait to see the first images later this summer.
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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

#49

Post by Suranis »

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Re: Hubble and other Telescope Images

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Post by Foggy »

I think Suranis is watching table tennis. :confuzzled:
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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