James Webb Space Telescope, information, updates and discussion |
James Webb Space Telescope, information, updates and discussion |
Aug 23 2005, 02:01 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 134 Joined: 13-March 05 Member No.: 191 |
The manufacture of the JWST mirror blanks has now been completed.
Despite this milestone, the fate of JWST is still somewhat precarious, because although the scientific bang from the telescope is expected to be huge, the bucks required have increased to a staggering $4.5 billion. A Space.com article on the squeeze in NASA's space-based astronomy plans gives some background. The JWST home page can be found here. The Space Telescope Science Institute, which runs Hubble, also has a site here. As does ESA. |
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Jun 5 2021, 01:00 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2113 Joined: 13-February 10 From: Ontario Member No.: 5221 |
True, but many ephemeral objects (and events) have come and gone in the past few years. I wonder what it would have made of ‘Oumuamua?
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Jun 5 2021, 04:06 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
JWST will have about the same resolution as HST, so it wouldn't have given us anything but a dot, but the IR spectral coverage may have turned something up. I don't think that 'Oumuamua plays to any of JWST's strengths, but a Rumsfeldian maxim applies: You don't know what you don't know.
Presumably, there will be as many interesting rare events in any decade as in any other decade, and I would imagine that the steady increase in sky surveys that can find those means, again, that JWST will have a better chance of seeing more in the future than in the past. The survey system that discovered 'Oumuamua, for example, had its two telescopes go online in 2008 and 2014. If JWST had been up in the sky in 2013 and a similar event had happened then, it would have been more likely that we simply would have missed it. It's not a pure coincidence that we've discovered two interstellar interlopers in the past four years and zero in the previous four hundred years. |
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