NASA's most powerful telescope ever is about to change how we see the universe

[F-22Raptor]

Soon, astronomers worldwide will be staring at their TVs, holding their breath. After a series of delays (so many delays!), NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is finally on track to launch before the end of the year. An ambitious upgrade from the Hubble telescope, this revolutionary probe promises to forever alter our knowledge of the universe.

"To me, launching Webb will be a significant life event -- I'll be elated, of course, when this is successful, but it will also be a time of deep personal introspection," said Mark Voyton, Webb observatory integration and test manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Twenty years of my life will all come down to that moment."


Armed with unprecedented infrared imaging power integrated with state-of-the-art machinery, Webb will travel 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth to give us access to the deepest, darkest and oldest secrets of space.

It's equipped to peer past the cosmic dark ages and document the first specks of light to flood the universe, see stars form behind dust clouds Hubble couldn't penetrate, zoom into supermassive black holes with unparalleled precision, detect galaxies invisible to the naked eye and begin cataloging planetary systems in search of habitable exoplanets.

While other space probes, such the 1989 Cosmic Background Explorer, have technically studied a greater distance into the universe than Webb will, this telescope "was designed not to see the beginnings of the universe, but to see a period of the universe's history that we have not seen yet," said John Mather, senior project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope.


Think of it as the difference between looking up at the stars from a light-saturated New York City, then from a dark forest glen. Standing beneath the shadows of dense greenery, you'd see a myriad more sparkles even though you're viewing the same sky -- you're just viewing it from a new lens unfiltered by light pollution.

Imagine a lens that can look out into the depths of space, unfiltered. One day, Webb could even help us answer a potentially chilling question: Are we alone in the universe?

https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/new...r-is-about-to-change-how-we-see-the-universe/

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

 

[Turingsage]

Having been eagerly awaiting the launch of James Webb for over 5 years now . Fingers crossed nothing goes wrong with this. Its going to take time before we get some first proper imaging.
The world owes NASA and the American scientific community a massive debt that they share with us so much of the bleeding edge discoveries. They continue the open pursuit of pure knowledge in best scientific tradition.

 

[Wikki019]

Having been eagerly awaiting the launch of James Webb for over 5 years now . Fingers crossed nothing goes wrong with this. Its going to take time before we get some first proper imaging.
The world owes NASA and the American scientific community a massive debt that they share with us so much of the bleeding edge discoveries. They continue the open pursuit of pure knowledge in best scientific tradition.

Best times ahead for space and universe enthusiasts, Thanks to ofcourse to NASA and all those funding and working on this massive project.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Having been eagerly awaiting the launch of James Webb for over 5 years now . Fingers crossed nothing goes wrong with this. Its going to take time before we get some first proper imaging.
The world owes NASA and the American scientific community a massive debt that they share with us so much of the bleeding edge discoveries. They continue the open pursuit of pure knowledge in best scientific tradition.

Hopefully those dopes in French Guiana didn't break it.

 

[TNT]

Been waiting for this. I hope it deploys safely and starts working soon.

 

[denel]

Been waiting for this. I hope it deploys safely and starts working soon.

Me too. However we must remember that optical spectrum is a small portion; the bigger area of research is actually in the xray and nonvisible spectrum using radio astronomy.

My friend is the leading astrophysicist on this and it is his brainchild for MeerKat/SKA. Square Kilometer Array is going to be the largest radio telescope based.



MeerKAT radio telescope finds ‘inconceivable’ floating cloud
https://www.itweb.co.za/contributors/JAPero3qZBqQb6mG





chevron_left

An overlay of MeerKAT 21-cm neutral hydrogen gas on a deep optical image. (Source: SARAO.)
South Africa’s radio telescope the MeerKAT, which is the precursor of the giant Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope, continues to make new discoveries.
An international team led by astronomers – professors Gyula Józsa, Michelle Cluver and Thomas Jarrett − utilised the South African MeerKAT radio telescope to discover a mysterious chain of hydrogen gas clouds the size of a massive galaxy.
In a statement, the South African Radio Astronomy Organisation (SARAO) says the accumulation of so much elemental hydrogen without associated stellar components is the largest yet discovered.
It says appearing at the edge of a relatively massive group of galaxies, there is the possibility that the cloud chain is gas stripped from group-member galaxies, but it may also be primordial and gravitationally drawn into the group through a cosmic filament pathway.
Whatever the case, SARAO says MeerKAT is proving to be a ground-breaking telescope, and this “dark” cloud discovery should soon be followed by many such discoveries in the exciting days ahead.
The discovery of the mystery clouds will be published in the renowned Astrophysical Journal under the title: “The detection of a massive chain of dark HI clouds in the GAMA G23 Field”.
A precursor to the SKA, South Africa’s MeerKAT telescope located in the Northern Cape was launched in 2018. It aims to answer fundamental astrophysical questions about the nature of objects in the Universe.
See also

SA’s MeerKAT radio telescope makes new discovery
MeerKAT telescope discovers universe’s ‘unknown unknowns’
The MeerKAT is currently made up of 64 dishes, each 13.5m in diameter.

Totally unexpected
Of late, the MeeKAT has made several ground-breaking discoveries. Last month, the radio telescope revealed new, previously unseen cosmic puzzles.
In June, the telescope produced a striking image showing a combination of cosmic features never before seen, revealing unexpected details of the inner workings of enormous radio galaxies.
Last year in April, an international team of astronomers uncovered unusual features in the radio galaxy ESO 137-006 using MeerKAT data.
Explaining the new discovery, Cluver from Swinburne University explains: “Cosmic filaments are the highways along which mass concentrations come together under the action of gravity.
“We expect gas-rich galaxies to be associated with these structures, using their neutral hydrogen as fuel for star formation and growth. We, therefore, designed our blind shallow survey to search for this type of gas along such a filament. And, indeed, we found gas in many galaxies, but we did not expect anything like these clouds. They form a huge complex of tenuous atomic hydrogen gas that stretches over a distance of 1.3 million light years. Seven spots of concentrated gas can be discerned from the complex,” says Cluver.
SARAO notes the puzzling thing is that despite its extraordinarily large gas mass (equivalent to 10 billion of our Sun’s mass), there are close to no stars in the vicinity of the complex.
It explains that normally, any cool gas like atomic hydrogen is associated with their “home” galaxy, where the gas reservoir continues to feed and grow the galaxy over eons of time.
Such a large cloud simply cannot survive on its own – floating freely, the local environment is far too harsh as it gets heated up and ionised by the radiation from surrounding galaxies, says the organisation. It adds that only the gravitational pull of a galaxy can, in principle, compact a cloud to a degree where it gets dense enough to create a natural shield against the cosmic background radiation.

Space mystery
Jarrett from the University of Cape Town says: “We were very surprised that we did not find any indication of a significant amount of stars, despite our thorough search using very deep ultraviolet, optical and infrared imaging. There have to be stars; it’s inconceivable for a cloud the size of a galaxy to simply be floating in space.”
SARAO believes there is one possible exception to this, where a small dwarf galaxy is seen close to one corner quadrant of the cloud complex, leaving at least six dark clouds.
Yet it is far too small to possibly be the origin of all this gas, it notes.
Józsa from the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy and Rhodes University explains: “Only a handful of cloud complexes with similarities to this one are known and our new discovery seems to differ in some key aspects.
“The simplest explanation would be that of a tidal interaction between galaxies, the gas being ripped out of the host galaxies in a close encounter. But how the six of seven supermassive concentrations without any stars can be formed in such an event still needs to be explained,” says Józsa.
SARAO points out that no obvious connection to any donor galaxy is evident from the data. It says the existence of these “dark clouds” is hence a mystery yet to be solved.
“Maybe the complex enters the group for the first time, consisting of primordial gas gravitationally pulled into the galaxy group along a cosmic filament. Now that the clouds have been discovered, the researchers hope that it will be possible to learn about their origin using dedicated, much deeper, observations with several telescopes in the southern hemisphere,” the organisation says.
“Solving this puzzle could have interesting implications for our understanding of the role that atomic hydrogen plays in how galaxies evolve in large-scale structures.”

 

[Ali_Baba]

I am so excited about this being launched and see what new discoveries it makes about the universe we live in - its been a long time coming as a project and I hope and pray that all goes ok with the launch and delivery of it into space and that there are no suprises as far as its expected behaviour versus unexpected.

 

[TNT]

Me too. However we must remember that optical spectrum is a small portion; the bigger area of research is actually in the xray and nonvisible spectrum using radio astronomy.

My friend is the leading astrophysicist on this and it is his brainchild for MeerKat/SKA. Square Kilometer Array is going to be the largest radio telescope based.



MeerKAT radio telescope finds ‘inconceivable’ floating cloud
https://www.itweb.co.za/contributors/JAPero3qZBqQb6mG





chevron_left

An overlay of MeerKAT 21-cm neutral hydrogen gas on a deep optical image. (Source: SARAO.)
South Africa’s radio telescope the MeerKAT, which is the precursor of the giant Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope, continues to make new discoveries.
An international team led by astronomers – professors Gyula Józsa, Michelle Cluver and Thomas Jarrett − utilised the South African MeerKAT radio telescope to discover a mysterious chain of hydrogen gas clouds the size of a massive galaxy.
In a statement, the South African Radio Astronomy Organisation (SARAO) says the accumulation of so much elemental hydrogen without associated stellar components is the largest yet discovered.
It says appearing at the edge of a relatively massive group of galaxies, there is the possibility that the cloud chain is gas stripped from group-member galaxies, but it may also be primordial and gravitationally drawn into the group through a cosmic filament pathway.
Whatever the case, SARAO says MeerKAT is proving to be a ground-breaking telescope, and this “dark” cloud discovery should soon be followed by many such discoveries in the exciting days ahead.
The discovery of the mystery clouds will be published in the renowned Astrophysical Journal under the title: “The detection of a massive chain of dark HI clouds in the GAMA G23 Field”.
A precursor to the SKA, South Africa’s MeerKAT telescope located in the Northern Cape was launched in 2018. It aims to answer fundamental astrophysical questions about the nature of objects in the Universe.
See also

SA’s MeerKAT radio telescope makes new discovery
MeerKAT telescope discovers universe’s ‘unknown unknowns’
The MeerKAT is currently made up of 64 dishes, each 13.5m in diameter.

Totally unexpected
Of late, the MeeKAT has made several ground-breaking discoveries. Last month, the radio telescope revealed new, previously unseen cosmic puzzles.
In June, the telescope produced a striking image showing a combination of cosmic features never before seen, revealing unexpected details of the inner workings of enormous radio galaxies.
Last year in April, an international team of astronomers uncovered unusual features in the radio galaxy ESO 137-006 using MeerKAT data.
Explaining the new discovery, Cluver from Swinburne University explains: “Cosmic filaments are the highways along which mass concentrations come together under the action of gravity.
“We expect gas-rich galaxies to be associated with these structures, using their neutral hydrogen as fuel for star formation and growth. We, therefore, designed our blind shallow survey to search for this type of gas along such a filament. And, indeed, we found gas in many galaxies, but we did not expect anything like these clouds. They form a huge complex of tenuous atomic hydrogen gas that stretches over a distance of 1.3 million light years. Seven spots of concentrated gas can be discerned from the complex,” says Cluver.
SARAO notes the puzzling thing is that despite its extraordinarily large gas mass (equivalent to 10 billion of our Sun’s mass), there are close to no stars in the vicinity of the complex.
It explains that normally, any cool gas like atomic hydrogen is associated with their “home” galaxy, where the gas reservoir continues to feed and grow the galaxy over eons of time.
Such a large cloud simply cannot survive on its own – floating freely, the local environment is far too harsh as it gets heated up and ionised by the radiation from surrounding galaxies, says the organisation. It adds that only the gravitational pull of a galaxy can, in principle, compact a cloud to a degree where it gets dense enough to create a natural shield against the cosmic background radiation.

Space mystery
Jarrett from the University of Cape Town says: “We were very surprised that we did not find any indication of a significant amount of stars, despite our thorough search using very deep ultraviolet, optical and infrared imaging. There have to be stars; it’s inconceivable for a cloud the size of a galaxy to simply be floating in space.”
SARAO believes there is one possible exception to this, where a small dwarf galaxy is seen close to one corner quadrant of the cloud complex, leaving at least six dark clouds.
Yet it is far too small to possibly be the origin of all this gas, it notes.
Józsa from the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy and Rhodes University explains: “Only a handful of cloud complexes with similarities to this one are known and our new discovery seems to differ in some key aspects.
“The simplest explanation would be that of a tidal interaction between galaxies, the gas being ripped out of the host galaxies in a close encounter. But how the six of seven supermassive concentrations without any stars can be formed in such an event still needs to be explained,” says Józsa.
SARAO points out that no obvious connection to any donor galaxy is evident from the data. It says the existence of these “dark clouds” is hence a mystery yet to be solved.
“Maybe the complex enters the group for the first time, consisting of primordial gas gravitationally pulled into the galaxy group along a cosmic filament. Now that the clouds have been discovered, the researchers hope that it will be possible to learn about their origin using dedicated, much deeper, observations with several telescopes in the southern hemisphere,” the organisation says.
“Solving this puzzle could have interesting implications for our understanding of the role that atomic hydrogen plays in how galaxies evolve in large-scale structures.”

Thats nice, all this makes me think i should have accepted that job offer at an observatory.

 

[JawadKKhan]

Very excited for this. Following the JWT news for atleast 5-6 years now.

6 days more to go: !

Hopefully everything goes well, there's vast unknown that it can reveal. Good to see many people with similar interests.

 

[KAL-EL]

Been waiting for this. I hope it deploys safely and starts working soon.

Amen to that !!

 

[jamal18]

Really interested! Can somebody tell me about the orbit? I am told that one of the things that make it special is that it is equidistant from the Earth and Moon.

 

[KAL-EL]

Really interested! Can somebody tell me about the orbit? I am told that one of the things that make it special is that it is equidistant from the Earth and Moon.

More than one AU from what I understand.

 

[jamahir]

More than one AU from what I understand.

Not actually. From the OP :

Armed with unprecedented infrared imaging power integrated with state-of-the-art machinery, Webb will travel 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth to give us access to the deepest, darkest and oldest secrets of space.

Whereas one AU is 149+ million kms :

astronomical unit (AU, or au), a unit of length effectively equal to the average, or mean, distance between Earth and the Sun, defined as 149,597,870.7 km (92,955,807.3 miles).

 

[KAL-EL]

Not actually. From the OP :

Where as one AU is 149+ million kms :

Must have heard incorrectly while watching a documentary on a subject.

I stand corrected