Great news about the resumption of in-person meetings of the AAS. I will be there having my pint (or two). Looking forward to meeting up with old and new faces.
In the meantime next week, 7:30pm on the 15th September, there is a lecture at Cardiff University on “Gravitational Waves”, free tickets via eventbrite (website)
There will be a couple of us from AAS going – so maybe see you there?
Bob Wright (Usk) gave an interesting talk on the JWST back in January. In case you wanted a little more on the current situation I came across a video on the “Launch Pad Astronomy” channel on YouTube.
It’s entitled “How James Webb orbits nothing”. It goes into the theory behind how the JWST can orbit an empty spot in space – just in case you ever wondered. It also emphasises the task that is faced by the JW team and the number of variables that they have to take into account.
A couple of interesting points from the video are that the telescope elliptical orbit around L2 takes about 6 months and, it’s up to twice the size of the moon’s orbit around Earth (JW orbit 250,000 to 832,000 cf the Moon 360,000 to 400,000km). The other point was that it isn’t actually orbiting L2 but a point slightly on the Earth side of L2. Reasons are in the video.
You can access it at this LINK .
Also, the “Where is Webb” website, HERE, explains how the first photons have been received of star (HD84406, some 260 l.yrs distant in Ursa Major) although, as the mirrors are not yet aligned, the picture isn’t much to look at.
NASA, ESA and CSA (the Canadians) got the Christmas present they wanted, a successful launch of the James Webb ST. and now a successful deployment.
It is now on it’s way to the L2 Lagrange Point, some 1.5 million km (almost 1 million miles) from the earth.
You can follow the telescopes progress on the NASA “Where is Webb” page <HERE>.
It’s December 2021 and the final moment in a saga, started in 1996, to build and launch a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is due to be hoisted aloft by an Arian 5 rocket from French Guiana on the 22nd. It will then take some 6 months to deploy before any science can be done.
It is a very complex engineering project and there are a host of things that can go wrong during its deployment, so fingers crossed.
JWST is an infra red telescope covering the wavelengths 0.6 to 28.3 µm, cf the visual range of 0.38 to 0.76 µm. This will enable it to look back to the era of the origin of stars and galaxies.
The main objectives of the JWST mission are:-
1) To investigate the light from the dawn of the universe some 13 billion years ago;
2) To study the formation of the first galaxies;
3) To look for the first generation stars and better understand the formation of stars and their planetary systems;
4) To study planetary systems in the Milky Way and potentially analyse the atmospheres of and look for signs of life from these planets.
In order to protect the instrument from the Sun, earth and moon, to get its operating temperature as low as possible, and increase its sensitivity, it is being placed at the Lagrange L2 position, some 1 million miles away in line with the sun and earth, with a huge parasol to protect it. If anything goes wrong then that is it, it cannot be serviced like the HST was!
Further information is at the following LINKs: NASA, ESA and the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Quanta Magazine has also just published an article, at LINK, and there is a video at LINK.
Following my email earlier this week I have had some photos sent to me.
I have included one from Tony P-F on the home page slide show and another of his, M42 the Orion nebula, has been loaded up on the Gallery/Deepsky photo page LINK
Any other photos for inclusion I am more than happy to receive. It would be nice to rotate members photos on the home page, a maximum of 4 photos can be used at any one time. Just email them to me.
I have changed the theme and may continue to “tinker” with it for a while. So, please excuse me doing so on a live page. Any comments – good/bad/indifferent are welcome.
It is providing difficult (for me anyway!) to get the page menu displaying on the web page so I have used another theme to achieve that.
I’m not overly keen on this set up but it will do as a temporary option for the moment. What do you think?