The remarkable images of space released this week are “just the tip of the iceberg”, says Gary Boyle.
Gary Boyle Iis an astronomy educator, guest lecturer and monthly columnist for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC), as well as past president of RASC’s Ottawa Centre.
It’s often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope did not disappoint.
During the press conference on Tuesday (July 12), the world had a ringside seat to the most remarkable images of the universe ever taken.
In one hour, five images left us wanting more. This is only the tip of the cosmic iceberg.
The deep-field image shows thousands of galaxies, including several that appear stretched out. This is not a disadvantage of the telescope.
This is the distortion caused by gravity from a large foreground galaxy. Albert Einstein predicted this warping or curvature of the fabric of space-time, much like someone standing on a trampoline where the rubber mat is warped. The larger the object, the greater the distortion of light.
To show the power of James Webb, the area of space where the deep-field image was taken was as small as a grain of sand held at arm’s length.
This cluster is located 4.6 billion light years away. This is the time it takes for light to reach us and when the sun and planets are slowly being created from the solar nebula.
Launched on December 25, 2021, the powerful Ariane 5 rocket delivered the seven-ton telescope into space, where it was deployed, and gracefully continued its journey.
It travels another 30 days to its final position, known as Lagrange 2, a point in space about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, or about four times the Earth-Moon distance.
Unlike Hubble, which was launched in 1990 with a defective mirror, requiring a repair mission in 1993 outfitting it with corrective lenses, James Webb is too far away for a service mission.
Who knows if there will be such a mission down the road if necessary, but for now there are no plans to ever visit the telescope.
The $10 billion project is a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, along with other companies.
Canada’s contribution is the Fine Pointing Sensor (FGS) used to point the massive telescope, as well as the Near Infrared Imaging Camera and the Slotless Spectrograph (NIRISS).
Thousands of people around the world worked on this project, which began in 1996 when it was first called the Next Generation Telescope. In 2002, the name was changed to the James Webb Space Telescope, who was NASA’s administrator from 1961 to 1968.
These were the early days of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.
The Webb project suffered setbacks along the way, with redesigns and the COVID-19 pandemic not helping matters.
When complete, the 18 gold-plated hexagonal honeycomb mirrors will have a total width of 6.5 meters, compared to Hubble’s 2.4 meter single mirror. This results in more light-gathering power along with its infrared ability to observe heat signatures through clouds of interstellar dust.
Another important part of the telescope is the tennis court-sized solar shield.
Composed of a lightweight material with special thermal properties, the five layers will provide a shield from the sun’s heat and light, as well as the heat of his instruments, allowing the sensitive infrared connection to operate without interference.
The mirror will operate at -223 C and the rest of the equipment is close to absolute zero or -273 C.
In the wise words of Carl Sagan, “somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known,” the James Webb Space Telescope has opened a new portal to discovery.
Will we someday glimpse the first stars and newborn galaxies dating back 13.8 billion years? Only time will tell.
clear sky.
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