How a CT observatory captured the Webb telescope
Out in the great beyond, nearly a million miles away, the James Webb Space Telescope is now sailing in place while humans run through its computers and cameras and complicated 18-piece mirror to ready them for use.
It’s a mission that’s caught the public imagination.
And, as it traveled, the crew of volunteers at the John J. McCarthy Observatory in New Milford, in turn, caught the Webb in their view.
Twice in January, the 16-inch telescope at the observatory picked up and imaged the telescope — once when it was 660,000 miles from earth and again, a few days later, when it reached Legrange Point 2, where the combined forces of the earth and sun’s gravity and orbits will hold it in balance for decades to come.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event,” said Bill Cloutier of New Milford, one of the observatory’s directors. “It’s going out to that point, never to be seen again.”
The observatory is part of a national astronomical network on the lookout for asteroids and meteors moving through the night sky. This was different — a moment in history not lost on those assembled at the observatory.
“My heart was pounding,” said Bob Lambert of Brookfield. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“It was really exciting,” said Sonia Kempe, a senior at Brookfield High School, who with Avery Erlenbach, 14, a freshman at Brookfield High, were part of the volunteer crew at the observatory.
“It was a great experience,” Erlenbach said. “It was beautiful.”
The James Webb Space Telescope launched into space on Christmas Day from the European spaceport in French Guiana on the northeast coast of South America.
It was 30 years and $10 billion in the making. As the launch approached, and then in the days after, people who ordinarily don’t care about space missions connected with the journey of the Webb.
“It’s been a long time coming,’’ Cloutier said
“I did a project in it in my freshman year,” Kempe said.
Part of the fascination had to do with the intricacies of the Webb’s deployment. On its way to Lagrange 2, it had to unfold like the petals of a flower — first, its solar panels, then its tennis court-sized sunshield, then its 21-foot wide mirror made up of 18 hexagonal sections.
There were 344 different operations along the way that could have gone wrong. All credit to the Webb team — none did.
“It’s almost hard to believe that it happened,” said Diana Hannikainen, observation editor for Sky & Telescope Magazine
Hannikainen credits NASA for educating the public about the Webb telescope in the months and weeks leading up to its launch.
“People knew about the shape of its mirror,” she said.
And they learned about its mission — to see in infrared light that will be able to look very deep into space and very far back in time learn about the origins of the universe.
It will be able to study the atmosphere of exoplanets and learn entirely new things about our own solar system. When the Webb becomes operational this summer, it will be the next great step forward in astronomy.
“Let’s hope they can get some images,” said Monty Robson. “Then it will be a really exciting time.”
Once the Webb successfully launched, its volunteers decided to capture it on its journey.
One of its continuing missions is to look for asteroids and comets, sending data to the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass. So seeing the Webb did not seem out of the question.
“We said ‘We can do that,’” said Marc Polansky of Watertown, who led the observatory’s astrophotography mission.
Lambert said the Horizons program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. now allows telescopes like the McCarthy Observatory 16-incher to zero in on its targets quickly and accurately.
And, while January was a predominately cloudy month, Cloutier said there were two nights when the skies cleared.
“The weather cooperated,” he said. “One of the nights was as good as we could have hoped for.”
Robson said when the Webb does begin expanding our knowledge of space, he hopes it also give humans a deeper perspective and appreciation of the planet they now live on.
“If they find something, some evidence of life on another planet, or if they don’t find something, it’s equally important,” he said. “We have to realize this is our only home and we ought to care for it.”