What the James Webb Space Telescope means

Category: Astronomy • Galaxies • Supernovae
Posted on: July 8, 2011 5:42 PM, by Ethan Siegel

"Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once." -Henry David Thoreau
The night sky is our greatest glimpse of what lies out there, beyond our own world, in the expanse of space we know as our Universe.

With our naked eyes, we are able to see a few thousand stars, the Moon, five planets, the Milky Way and a few other nebulous "clouds" or "fuzzballs." And with just our naked eyes alone, we could learn some remarkable things about the Universe, including the basic structure of our Solar System and the orbital motion of the planets. Based on our understanding of brightness and distance, we could also -- if we assumed that the Sun was just a star -- roughly measure the distance to the stars, too.

But we are not bound by the limits of our eyes any longer.

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The James Webb Space Telescope! With a 6.5-meter-wide set of mirrors for gathering light, this new telescope will leave Hubble in the dust. With a huge range of wavelengths it can cover, from a green color far into the infrared, it will be more sensitive, by a factor of about 100, than all the other telescopes that have come before it.

And we already know some of the new things we'll be able to observe with it. Even more distant galaxies and supernovae than ever before. The formation of solar systems. Direct images of individual, Earth-sized planets around about half the stars on this list, including the ability to detect water, atmospheres and surface features. And -- for the first time -- the ability to directly measure the first stars formed in our Universe.

more

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/07/what_the_james_webb_space_tele.php

Perhaps they should call it the "Ayn Rand Space Telescope", then the tp'ers might support it.

James Webb was a former NASA administrator, why couldn't they have named it after some astronomer, like the Hubble was.

I'm a moderate space enthusiast and I had no idea who James Webb was until after the JWST was named.

If not for him, the Apollo program might not have gotten off the ground. NASA would probably not have surived the Apollo 1 fire. I think this honor is due him.

The latest U.S. House of Representatives appropriations bill seeks to cut funding for NASA by $1.6 billion, and in the process eliminate the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) project. While it is undeniable that the project has had large cost overruns and is behind schedule, it is also very clear that the project will once complete be a tool of enormous worth to the scientific community — and, through them, to the general population — not just in the U.S. but in the entire world.

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If you’re American, you can help keep NASA funded to complete JWST: First, contact your congressperson online either via email or his/her official website, because the bill has to clear the House first. If it should make it through the House, contact your senators urging them to vote against it. Help them see that, even though the price isn’t cheap (although compared to the rest of the budget, it might actually look cheap), the knowledge gained from the project’s completion will almost certainly make it look like a bargain. And spread the word on Twitter, on Facebook, on Google+, and anywhere else you can think of: This is a project we can’t afford to lose. Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, who initiated the study last fall that revealed the cost overruns, has issued a statement strongly opposing defunding the project.

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/07/why-you-need-to-help-save-the-james-webb-space-telescope/


Links within article to email your senators & reps.
Thanks!