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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Jul 14 2022, 06:39 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 444 Joined: 1-July 05 From: New York City Member No.: 424 |
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. QUOTE The images and data STSCI will release Thursday were gathered during the Webb telescope’s 6-month-long commissioning process, during which scientists and engineers on Earth put the telescope’s four instruments through their paces a million miles away from here. Around the same time, scientists will get their hands on the actual data behind Webb’s striking first full-color images. “Then the scientists can start delving into that, and now producing scientific papers on those early data,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer Charles Beichman, a member of the instrument team for Webb’s NIRCam instrument, tells Inverse. 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. QUOTE Later this week, Webb will point its instruments much closer to home, first checking out the asteroid 1998-BC1 and then moving on to a series of observations of Jupiter, starting with the gas giant’s faint rings. “I think we will get that data pretty soon,” University of California, Berkeley astronomer Imke de Pater, the primary investigator of the Jupiter study, tells Inverse. “But then it will take us a long, long time to actually reduce them and get usable products out of it. And that will take longer for planetary observations, I think, because the planets move and rotate, so we have to take all of that into account.” “It won't be instantaneous science," she adds. 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. |
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