Scientists anticipate Webb telescope
As December becomes January, the most technologically-advanced, most complicated and most expensive piece of origami ever imagined will begin unfolding in space as it reaches its destination a million miles away.
If all goes as planned, this thing — the James Webb Space telescope — will begin its quest to see farther out into space, farther back into time, and to tell us more about our own solar system than any other telescope before.
It will be the next great leap forward in astronomy after the profound achievements of the Hubble Space Telescope.
“It will be a game-changer,” said planetary astronomer Heidi Hammel. “I’m thrilled. And terrified.”
Thrilled because Hammel has spent more than 20 years working on the Webb telescope first in ad hoc discussions, then in 2003, as a member of its scientific working group.
Terrified because, with something as complicated as launching a giant telescope into space, something may go wrong.
“Rocket science is really scary,” said Hammel, who lived in Ridgefield for many years before becoming vice-president for science of the Washington DC-based AURA – the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy – in 2010.
The Webb is an international project, with NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency all involved with its development. It’s taken more than 20 years and $10 billion to get this far.
So, everyone in the sky watching community will be paying attention on Dec. 22 when, if all goes as planned, the Webb Telescope will leave earth.
“We’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” said Diana Hannikainen, observing editor for Sky & Telescope Magazine. “We will be crossing all our fingers and toes.”
That’s because the Webb will see in space by collecting infrared light.
Infrared light is part of the light spectrum that human eyes cannot see. But objects moving far away from us in space — objects we cannot see — still give off infrared light. Infrared
waves also move through clouds of gas and dust without scattering.
Working in the infrared spectrum, the Webb telescope will be able to look far deep into space and see objects at the edge of the universe that no telescope has seen before. Because the universe is expanding, it will, in essence, be able to see back into time, finding objects created shortly after the Big Bang and give astronomers entirely new insights in how the universe was born.
“What Hubble gave us was pictures of galaxies in their teenage years — high school graduation picture,” Hammel said. “The Webb telescope will give us baby pictures.”
It will also enable planetary
astronomers to learn much more about the four gas giant planets in our solar system — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — as well as the millions of objects, including Pluto, in the Kuiper Belt, the doughnut-shaped ring encircling the solar system.
Hammel heads the team of astronomers that will decide what the Webb will study among these relatively nearby objects. In the same way that it opens up the study of the origins of the universe, she said, the Webb will let astronomers learn how the solar system was born.
But to do all these things, it has to arrive at its final destination at Lagrange 2. That’s a point in space about a million miles away where the sun’s and earth’s gravity and their orbits will allow the Webb to float in its own orbit with almost no effort.
Hammel said because of Webb’s size, it is folded up in place aboard the Ariane rocket.
Once launched, it will begin to unfold — first its solar panels, then its tennis court-sized sunshield, then its 21-foot wide mirror. The mirror has 18 hexagonal segments that can shift and change the shape of the mirror to better focus on what it’s studying.
Once it arrives at Lagrange 2 in January, it will take months for all its cameras and systems to get a run-through. If all goes well. Hammel and her team will begin to do science in mid-2022.
And like Hubble, it will produce astounding images of the things it sees.
“As a scientist, I love data, numbers, charts,” said Hannikainen of Sky & Telescope. “Other people have minds that work differently.’’
Hubble, she said, opened the universe up to people, made it exciting.
“Astronomy involves a lot of things — physics, chemistry, biology,” Hannikainen said. “I think a lot of teenagers today, seeing images from the Webb telescope will be inspired.”