Patience Rewarded
Patience Recommended: Seeing billions of years of light.
Patience Commended: For your space craft taking flight.
Patience Intended: By NASA and its crews.
Patience Rewarded: When pictures come into views.
© Forrest W. Heaton January 2022
We are betting that some of you joined Mary & me (not together in person but together in spirit) to wait (sometimes not too patiently) for the James Webb Space Telescope’s first photographic images of billons of years back in time. Yes? Unimaginable, yes? Beyond our dreams, yes? This blog post is a companion to our first blog post of this year, 15Jan22, dealing with the James Webb Space Telescope and its soon to be received and released photography.
Entering www.nasa.gov/webb into our search engine in February, here’s NASA’s first advice re the James Webb Space Telescope’s work and the upcoming photos: “The James Webb Space Telescope will find the first galaxies that formed in the early universe and peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems. Learn more from the mission's project website.” The second advice, a tweet, reads: “Webb made light work of … light work! Having seen its first photons of starlight, #NASAWebb has begun the 3-month process of getting its mirrors into focus so it can start science this summer. https://go.nasa.gov/34aFW9v #UnfoldTheUniverse”
Hard as it is to imagine, the JWST, 100 million miles away from Earth and orbiting the sun, is intended to begin sending its first photographs this summer (almost upon us)! Here’s what NASA has to say about the mission:
“Where we’re going, we don’t need roads! To see back in time, [JWST] looks in infrared wavelengths, which we feel as heat. [Hubble] sees visible light, with infrared and ultraviolet abilities. The telescopes will work together as we #UnfoldTheUniverse.”
“ ‘More than 20 years ago, the Webb team set out to build the most powerful telescope that anyone has ever put in space and came up with an audacious optical design to meet demanding science goals,’ said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Today we can say that design is going to deliver.’ ”
“While some of the largest ground-based telescopes on Earth use segmented primary mirrors, Webb is the first telescope in space to use such a design. The 21-foot, 4-inch (6.5-meter) primary mirror – much too big to fit inside a rocket fairing – is made up of 18 hexagonal, beryllium mirror segments. It had to be folded up for launch and then unfolded in space before each mirror was adjusted – to within nanometers – to form a single mirror surface.”
“In addition to enabling the incredible science that Webb will achieve, the teams that designed, built, tested, launched, and now operate this observatory have pioneered a new way to build space telescopes,” said Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
So, dear readers, our horizons are about to be expanded in ways we cannot yet imagine! And, you have a front row seat! Here’s what NASA has to say as to timing: “For decades we’ve worked on the world’s most powerful space telescope – dreaming, building, and then launching. Now its almost time to #UnfoldTheUniverse with @NASAWebb! Set a reminder for July 12, when we’ll see #NASAWebb’s first images together. gonasa.gov/3zgd64r”
