My guess is very small, relative to the size of the segment. The concern seems to be for uncorrectable wavefront error, due to distortions of the segments' shapes due to the force of the impacts. There's no mention of significant obscuration from the impacts.

The big question is: was this a rare fluke or can we expect more such hits every few months. The commissioning document mentions the possibility of disfavouring pointing along the direction of orbital motion to try to minimize further damage.

The reality of a 20-year mission rather than a 5-year mission gives two good reasons for this: It quadruples whatever rate of impacts, and also allows plenty of time to make up for pointing constraints. All the same observations can still be made, just on a different schedule.

It's interesting that some impacts can affect the figure of a segment in a way that can be measured by wavefront sensing. It looks like the scope as a whole had a 10% increase in the rms wavefront error from the impact. Smaller more frequent impacts might ding the segments in a way that scattered light is the main noticeable effect. Sounds like a good idea to point behind the orbital motion direction, after all here on Earth meteors happen much more after midnight than before.

Indeed - Fig 3 in the commissioning document shows the wavefront error after the big hit:

The big hit was on C3, at the middle of the lower-right edge. You can see an area of relatively large wavefront error in that segment (around 1 micron in amplitude) - the bright spot. (And it looks like they tried to compensate by tilting/changing the curvature of C3.)

But the fact they can get a wavefront error signal right through the impact point, at the resolution of this plot, shows that the crater has to be very small. Presumably you'd get no signal from the damaged surface in the crater.

I thought there was supposed to be a further release of solar system images today, following the informal release of Jupiter images in the commissioning report. Haven’t found anything so far.

Edit: I was misled by a few terse tweets from yesterday.

According to an article on inverse.com, a general-interest site that's new to me, what’s happening today, or soon, is a release of data from the commissioning period.



https://www.inverse.com/science/webb-space-...pe-solar-system

So there may be a few more engineering images of planets for people to dig out of the commissioning data, but no final products for a while.



Edit2: And while I was editing this post, Hungry4info posted below with a link to a press release about the commissioning data, with a few more engineering images of Jupiter.

JWST Commissioning data is now available
https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/07/14/webb...issioning-data/

Scott Manley on the Webb initial image release:

https://youtu.be/0FWO1Pvbhq4

--Bill

Hello !

Did the JWST observe a supernova ?..

https://twitter.com/gbrammer/status/1547690...690869704208392

A supernova, or a red dwarf in the foreground that appears much dimmer in shorter wavelengths? There are about eight objects that appear much brighter in the JWST image than the HST image. And I'm sure it didn't observe eight supernovae.

Astrophysicist Becky Smethhurst at the Webb initial image release:
https://youtu.be/7K2J-cO_tOI

Bonjour,

Thanks to StargazeinWonder for his comment.

Moreover :

https://twitter.com/drbecky_/status/1548982...982149231132674

https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/phase2-public/2589.pdf

On the "dust illuminating" powers of the IR vision of Webb.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereur...sh=3675e13c79d9

Bonjour ou bonsoir, au choix

Just weeks into its mission, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has broken the record for the oldest galaxy ever observed by nearly 100 million years.

https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/...3.jpg?width=778

GLASS-z13 is the oldest galaxy ever seen. Naidu et al, P. Oesch, T. Treu, GLASS-JWST, NASA/CSA/ESA/STScI

Seeing some of the first galaxies to form after the big bang 13.8 billion years ago is one of the key goals of the JWST. When these emerged is currently unknown: the previous oldest identified galaxy, found by the Hubble Space Telescope, is called GN-z11 and dates back to 400 million years after the birth of the universe.
…
Source : https://www.newscientist.com/article/232960...n-the-universe/

And the following publication :

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.09434.pdf

Bonsoir,

I’m afraid of being thrown out of the forum ! I’m taking you so far away from the solar system !

What ?! The JWST would already observe at z 16 !!!

https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.12356

New JWST observations of the Cartwheel galaxy Webb Captures Stellar Gymnastics in The Cartwheel Galaxy