Numerous astronomers eagerly await the launch of the first space telescope, which could determine the future of their career.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is NASA’s successor for Hubble. However, it can see more than Hubble.
Launching a piece of $10 billion-worth of equipment brings with it thousands upon thousands of proposals for research, observation time, and scientists hoping to unravel the secrets of our universe and answer any questions.
Some believe that a Christmas miracle will be necessary to launch the aircraft, but there are many delays and weather issues, which could lead to delay upon delay.
MailOnline interviewed a variety of astronomers who have staked their career on this new generation of space telescope. One observational astronomer from St Andrews, Alex Scholz said Webb was ‘the only one in town’
JWST launches from French Guiana Spaceport, European Space Agency on Friday 25 December at 12:20 GMT aboard an Ariane 5 rocket.
Many astronomers wait anxiously for the launch space telescopes that will determine their next ten years of careers.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, (JWST), is NASA’s successor to Hubble. But it does more than that iconic observatory. It can view much more than Hubble.
Scientists hope Webb will provide them with a deep understanding of the Big Bang.
But it isn’t without risk, as NASA says there are 344 single-point-of-failure items on the new telescope, and thats before it begins operations a million miles from Earth.
Mark McCaughrean is an ESA Webb Interdisciplinarian Scientist who has waited more than twenty years to get data from Webb.
He claimed he didn’t feel nervous about the rocket’s launch because it was tested, prepared and simulate-tested to the last inch, and had confidence in engineers.
He stated that launch is always a concern because of the fact that you’ve placed a costly piece on an explosion with barely guided guidance. However, it’s what we do, so the Ariane 5 was a great workhorse.
Even if all goes well, the scary part for many astronomers is weeks later, when it reaches its solar orbit one million miles distant.
The golden mirrors will be unfurled when the satellite is orbited. That will give it greater access to the dark and early universe. However, this process comes with risks.
A $10 billion piece or equipment is launched with thousands of observation times, research proposals and other resources. These researchers hope to discover the secrets of the universe and provide answers about why it all happened.
Many believe a “Christmas miracle” will be required to make it happen. There are delays after delays, and even a weather-related issue that could delay launch until Christmas Day.
‘Webb is such a complex observatory and we won’t know whether it can meet its full potential until about six months after launch,’ Dr Emma Curtis-Lake, STFC Webb Fellow from the University of Hertfordshire, told MailOnline.
‘I know I’ll be impulsively checking the NASA updates for the first month after launch as it un-folds,’ she said, adding ‘that is the part of Webb’s journey I’m most anxious about with so many things that can go wrong.’
Webb will be launched once the planet is in orbit. It will then spend the next month traveling to the final Lagrange point L2 (the point where Earth and sun are equal in gravity), before it returns home.
It will begin to unfold once it reaches L2. The sunshield is a diamond-shaped, five-layer structure that measures the same size as a tennis court.
Mirror measures 6.5 metres in width and is composed of 18 gold-coated, hexagonal segments.
McCaughrean stated that the earlier stages of the launch were just engineering. The scary stage is the sunshield. It is experimental and largely classical.
“The sunshield, which is made up of a lot of thin film and can be floppy and difficult to release one time in case it gets tangled and fly around,” he stated.
It deploys slowly, using pins that are pulled out to release the next section. However, it’s not rigid and it’s possible for it to get caught up and cause it to stop working properly. The device has been successfully tested, deployed and many improvements made during testing.
“The problem is that it cannot be tested completely under zero g, or at the temperatures it will experience. While there are some things we can simulate for it, we don’t know how it’ll perform until it reaches its orbit.
Many reasons exist for the excitement that astronomers feel about Webb’s potential to make observations, including its broad range of capabilities.
MailOnline’s Alex Sholz said that Webb is a tool to discover free-floating stars – such as Jupiter – which have not orbit the star.
JWST launches from French Guiana Spaceport, European Space Agency on Friday 25 December at 12:20 GMT from atop an Ariane 5 rocket
MailOnline talked to several astronomers about how their careers have been influenced by the next-generation space telescope. Alex Scholz from St Andrews was one of these astronomers.
“Doing so will allow us to discover more about planet and star formation. There is currently no telescope capable of doing this.
“The mass of Jupiter is 5x the size of Jupiter’s, according to existing telescopes. However, we are interested in exploring the populations of lower-mass objects.
JWST has to be the only option. If it does not succeed, we will need to continue working on other problems.
Emma Curtis-Lake, from the Centre for Astrophysics Research at the University of Hertfordshire is one of two dedicated Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Webb Fellows, who will use Webb data and observations.
Her current research is focused on star formation in galaxies within the Early Universe. It’s an area that challenges the boundaries of the available observatories.
“The Webb telescope is able to see back further than Hubble and it can even see the light of galaxies more clearly by pushing farther into infrared,” she stated.
NASA declares that “astronomers from all over the globe will now be able conduct scientific observations in order to increase our understanding about the universe.”
Scientists hope Webb will provide them with a deep understanding of the Big Bang. This includes a search for exoplanets that are free to orbit, and a view at the stars formed after it.
Astronomers can see more light from distant galaxies, which allows them to reveal more about the universe.
Webb will enable us to separate the light using spectra,” said Dr Curtiss-Lake. He also stated that this would allow us to look for fingerprints of various elements such as Carbon, Nitrogen, and Oxygen which are essential elements to our lives.
This allows them to tell a story about the cosmic origins and evolution of essential elements.
The Webb telescope has been used by her team for 800 hours. This will last approximately five years. It also includes revisiting Hubble’s fields, which were stared at for hundreds upon hours.
This will include repeating the famous Hubble Ultra-Deep Field, that among other things, told astronomers that star-forming galaxies were far more common in the clusters of the younger Universe than in modern clusters of galaxies near us today.
MailOnline was informed that a spectrograph called NIRSpec (which is incredibly sensitive and can take spectra from hundreds of galaxies simultaneously) will be used to collect spectra. She also stated that Hubble will not miss any galaxies.
Webb will be used by the researchers to search for supermassive dark holes within early galaxies and buildup of life-giving elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen.
But it isn’t without risk, as NASA says there are 344 single-point-of-failure items on the new telescope, and thats before it begins operations a million miles from Earth
Emma Curtis-Lake from the Centre for Astrophysics Research at University of Hertfordshire, is one of two STFC Webb Fellows. They will make use of Webb data and observations
Curtis Lake said that elements such as these aren’t present after the Big Bang.
McCaughrean was involved in the data side of the telescope preparations form the late 1990s, and says it will provide an insight into the universe like no telescope before it.
When we first spoke, he was on a last-minute flight to French Guiana for the launch.
MailOnline: He said that although he had originally intended to fly to the US to launch this campaign, it turned out that he was not going. Instead, he is going to French Guiana.
Webb’s core science team, Science Working Group is made up of an astronomer and has been doing so since 1998. His scientific background includes studying the origins and evolution of planets and stars in the Milky Way.
His comments included that exoplanets have been the focus of much of the attention since it was created, although they were discovered only in the late 1990s. However, it is crucial for anyone looking at today’s birth of stars in our Milky Way.
The reason stars appear cooler is because they are made of material that’s more dense than anything else. The stars can be described as being in construction zones.
The young stars can be seen in visible wavelengths (as seen by Hubble as well as the human eye) but you will see them in the infrared. They emit more light and are therefore cooler in the infrared.
JWST reduces the number of objects that can be seen, according to him. This is primarily because the telescope’s temperature drops to -230 Celsius. It doesn’t emit any infrared light, which means that astronomers do not have to “fight” against the infrared emitted by Earth.
Webb can take photos ten times sharper and hundreds times more detailed than Hubble’s, but he will also be able to do so with a digital camera.
McCaughrean explained to MailOnline how Webb was so important to astronomy that the 2001 proposals he made for Webb were relevant because they have yet to be examined by any other telescope.
His research will focus on a young, dense star-forming region called “The Orion Nebula”, which is the “faint fuzzy bob below Orion” belt.
He stated, “In that nursery there were thousands of young stars packed in a space equal in volume as the distance between Sun and Alpha Century,”
Webb, primarily an infrared telescope will provide a broad spectrum view of the Earth than Hubble. Webb also operates further from Earth in a solar orbit.
McCaughrean stated that Webb is important because of its broad capabilities. With a particular focus on astronomy, McCaughrean believes Webb has many strengths.
JWST was created as a general purpose observatory. There are also ideas and discoveries from just a few years back.
The space-based telescopes can perform ‘lots’ of tasks, according to the inventor.
Jan Cami and Els Peeters, both from Space Telescope Research Institute are currently working together on a Webb-linked project entitled: Radiative Feedback from Massive Stars As Traced By Multiband Imaging, Spectroscopic Mozaics.
To get an understanding of the formation process, they will examine material around young stars using the Webb telescope.
MailOnline spoke with Els Peeters, who said that she would study the effects of radiation on young stars.
It’s like going camping during winter, and lighting a fire. While the snow melts around the fire, there’s still more snow farther out.
“The same happens to young stars. They are embedded in cloud where they were formed and radiation alters the properties of cloud.
Webb will make observations using his infrared camera, sensors and microphone to determine how the processes in the Orion Nebula actually function.
Jan Cami described it like a comic-book. Hubble can show us all the frames of the whole book in one place. This gives you a sense that this might be a spiderman adventure. But, it’s not what happens.
“What we can say with Webb is that this image belongs to this part, but that it is farther away from the star and what the physical story for that region is.
Webb was described by them as being capable of showing many different properties simultaneously in a given region, with the limited field of view as an important factor.
Dr. Peeters stated that for our particular research we were looking at carbon molecules in the space. Webb’s wavelength is ideal, which allows us to simultaneously track everything.
Webb could be hurt during launch, or the chaotic unfolding of its mirror. Many astronomers believe that there is no Plan B.
Curtis Lake said that while there are several space missions, Euclid, and Nancy Grace Roman, which will improve our understanding of early Universe, nothing is quite like Webb.
Webb’s purpose is to see into deep space and pick up tiny objects.
‘Both Euclid and Nancy Grace won’t be able to probe as far back in time as Webb, and lack the spectroscopic capabilities, which means that tracing the cosmic origins of elements will be many years off.
Named after James E. Webb (American government official, who served as NASA administrator from 1961 through 1968) and was an integral part of the Apollo program.
“They will however cover much greater areas of the sky than Webb, which allows us to search exotic and rare objects Webb might miss.”
James Webb Space Telescope is expected to share its first images of night sky with researchers by June 2022.
ESA, NASA, and other organizations called for “open science” projects. These would have priority for telescopes, with NASA receiving first-run priority in exchange for rapid results and open data access.
‘What we have in the first year is three levels of observation – guaranteed time observers who have had time for 20 years, then people who applied 18 months ago, competitively selected, and then you have early release science.
‘These are people who applied to get data within the first six months, and all of their data will be made public immediately,’ said Dr McCaughrean.
This will allow you to compare the different instrument’s capabilities in different ways. However, it will also help with real science and making new discoveries.
Webb is not likely to be used in the discovery of life on another planet. However, he said he would be able point out exoplanets which have habitable atmospheres.
He said that the first science might be published in 2022’s Autumn, but it is impossible to predict what they will be and how long their observations will take.
Webb will travel to an orbit about one million miles away from Earth and undergo six months of commissioning in space – including unfolding its mirrors and sunshield, cooling down, aligning and calibrating
Cami stated that science in the future will be at most broad and diverse. He said about Dr Cami’s telescope: “I am excited because of a lot different reasons.”
This is a gamechanger. The machine will reveal the entire cosmic origin.
“The first generation of stars we see will be quite different from any others. It will be possible to observe how stars are formed, the evolution of planets and how they form.
“We’ll even be able to catch the planets being formed in action, learning more about chemical components involved in their formation and linking them with our origins of existence.”
No matter what Christmas miracle it may be, James Webb will launch and deploy as planned, and we’ll have a decade full of new astronomy that gives us an unparalleled view of the universe.