James Webb Space Telescope (1 Viewer)

bonnjer

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For anyone interested in astronomy, this telescope is a pretty big deal. We've seen what Hubble has been able to provide for us over the years, but this new telescope should blow those images out of the water. It's got a mirror 3 times the size of Hubble and, thanks to its tennis court sized shield, will be contaminated by light.

I figured I'd start a thread and update it periodically as we get to big milestones and the release of images.

The next big date is currently set for December 18. Launch day. It'll take about a month to get it to L2, a million miles from Earth. Then, another six months to check and calibrate. So, at some point during the summer, we may get the first real images coming in. I'm looking forward to what this thing will show us.
 
On the one hand, the JWST has been under development for nearly 30 years with BILLIONS of dollars on cost overruns and all sorts of technical issues leading up to now. I worry that this one is going to have a major problem while it sits at L5, where it will never be repaired.

But on the other hand, NASA landed not one but two rovers on MARS using the Bat CRAZY rocket powered skycrane. So they could nail this.

If they nail it, the world is gonna change.
 
I’ve been thinking of picking up a telescope since my place backs up to a levee and I’m kind of away from city lights. Does this one come with the attachment for your phone and is the image right side up?

This is at the top of my list to Santa:



Fully automated with 40K pre-programmed objects, six inch primary mirror, easy to deploy in the yard.
 
holy shirt. I admire your taste in toys. I would love to hear about (or see) what that thing can do if you get it.

Jeff Asher on twitter, when he’s not doing crime data analysis, posts pictures of planets - this is the scope he uses, that’s where I got the tip about it.

 
Launch date pushed back slightly to December 22.

 
It's mounted on the rocket now. Ready to blast off in little over a week.

I'm on pins and needles. I so want this to be a success. I can only imagine the nerves on edge in the project. It will be kinda on par when the control room watched the Mars rover successfully land.
 
As someone who has invented something, I totally understand the cost and time overruns.

I sit in amazement of these scientists and those that build the rovers on Mars.

My stupid little thing took four years, hundreds of design iterations and I had to build 26 before it would pass. I had budgeted for 1 year and five live tests. The problem is you don’t know what you don’t know (that is seriously sage advice that sounds like Yogi Berra said it) so you can’t reverse engineer it with any real accuracy. Every time you run into an unknown you have to stop and back up…. Sometimes to the beginning. It is maddening and makes you a miserable person.

And these poor bastages get one shot. In zero gravity. A million miles from earth. And if they mess up a calculation that essentially no one on earth but them can solve, even by a billionth of a degree, the whole thing is shot and they get made fun of forever as total failures.

I can’t even fathom the problems they ran in to. The amount of modeling you would have to do.

So I have high hopes for success. After the witchcraft they pulled off on Mars I don’t doubt those eggheads for a second.
 
Fungi from James' web space between his toes under a microscope

microscopic-image-growing-molds-mold-260nw-1353424817.jpg
 
Another slight delay, to Christmas Eve (at the earliest), due to a pre-launch data glitch.

 
Another slight delay, to Christmas Eve (at the earliest), due to a pre-launch data glitch.

The delays worry me, but then I think "at least they're catching them early". And it doesn't look like they are design errors.
 

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