Celestial Beauty from James Webb Telescope
We are in awe of the beautiful images released by NASA from the James Webb Telescope. It's incredible to see the natural imagery and how it compares to the artistic representation of the Universe from decades past.
Carina Nebula, Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
Image of a single star
The Webb telescope's first actual image was released on August 7. It's a near-infrared spectrum of a dying star in the Southern Ring Nebula. The dying star has been ejecting rings of gas and dust for thousands of years. Webb's mission is only beginning, but it will eventually allow scientists to observe the first galaxies and understand the cosmic dawn.
A spectroscopic map of the constellation Pegasus shows five galaxies in the image. The galaxy on the upper left is believed to be close to Earth, while the other four are 300 million light-years away. The image was created by combining multiple wavelengths of light and then recombined. The resulting image took approximately 12.5 hours to create. While Hubble takes weeks to develop deep-field images, the Webb telescope took only a few hours.
Cost of NASA James Webb telescope
In a recent article, Quartz explored the potential for economic benefit from exploring the extraterrestrial sphere, and David W. Brown discussed the astronomical budget and the emergence of space X-rays. Despite these problems, the James Webb Space Telescope has been able to make some amazing scientific discoveries. The biggest problems stem from the project's massive underestimation of its costs and the failure of scientists to stop themselves from adding new technologies.
The James Webb telescope is among the most expensive science projects ever built. It took over two decades to build and will cost $10 billion, making it one of NASA's most expensive science projects. However, the cost of the project was spread out over a two-decade period, and the annual expenditures are variable, depending on the needs of the telescope and the number of highly-trained workers required to complete the project. Despite its cost, the telescope will only require about 3% of NASA's budget per year.
Science goals
The new James Webb telescope will provide unprecedented views of the Universe, including the solar system and distant planets. It will also help astronomers study the chemical composition of the atmospheres of these worlds. But these aren't the only goals of Webb. Other goals of the telescope include analyzing the Universe's geometry and the composition of dark matter, a mysterious force that powers the Universe's accelerated expansion.
Another major theme for the new telescope is "Planetary Systems and Origins of Life," which aims to study the physical properties of planetary systems and the potential for life in these systems. This goal requires near-IR imaging and spectroscopy of exoplanets. The science case for this theme includes the study of the solar system, as well as the study of first-generation stars. The new telescope will also observe objects in the Kuiper belt and icy moons.
Need for a sunshield
Three days after its launch, NASA's James Webb telescope is three days into its deployment phase, but the astronomical telescope still needs a sunshield. Its instrumentation requires extreme cold to work properly, but a sunshield protects it from the elements. Its five layers of Kapton are particularly fragile and will need to be refrigerated at 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheit to register radiation.
The sunshield is composed of five thin layers of Kapton, a polyimide film developed by Dupont. NASA scientists stitched together these layers of materials to create a structure that is both lightweight and durable. The layers of the Sunshield will reflect the sun's heat back into space. The outermost layer will reach 230 degrees Fahrenheit during the mission, while the innermost layer will only reach -394 Fahrenheit.
We can't wait to see this mission evolve over the next decade and the beauty of space revealed more truly.
