This star was taken last Wednesday (NASA)
With much pride, the US space agency (NASA) released the first image of the $10 billion telescope. The James Webb Telescope, described as “The next Hubble”, took 20 years to complete, a project in which NASA is cooperating with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
The telescope was launched into space aboard an Ariane 5 rocket, on Christmas Eve 2021, from the European launch station for its rockets in French Guiana. The goal, as NASA says, is to reach far beyond the Hubble telescope, and to look into the past through the telescope’s high ability to capture light in the darkest and smallest points in the sky, hoping to transmit new information and images about the universe, and the first moments of the age of stars and galaxies. .
Astronomers distinguish the star in the first image, which was published on Wednesday, as 2MASS J17554042+6551277, a star that is not of special importance, but was chosen for the purpose of testing the telescope and preparing its mirror. Prior to that, the image taken by the telescope and published by “NASA” about a month ago, showed a single star in 18 misty bright spots, each of which was an image taken by the 18 hexagonal mirrors separately, before stacking them together in a process called “the alignment process”, to produce It has one mirror, with a diameter of about 6.5 meters. This makes the light-gathering area of the James Webb mirror six times larger than the light-gathering area of the Hubble mirror.
Look how far we’ve come: We started with 18 scattered dots — 18 reflections of the same star, one from each of Webb’s primary mirror segments. These dots were then re-arranged, stacked, and fine-tuned, setting the stage for our first science images this summer! #UnfoldTheUniverse pic.twitter.com/N1KvmdoH7r
— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) March 16, 2022
These numbers and measurements express the capabilities of “James Webb” to “see” in pitch darkness that far exceeds the capabilities of “Hubble”. It also explains the enthusiasm of astronomers for the distinctive images that the telescope will reveal, a scientific revolution, and arouse a euphoria comparable to that caused by a picture of “Hubble” in 1995, which enabled us to look into the distant past, in which thousands of galaxies appeared in different times for more than 12 billion years. Photocell. It all first appeared in the eXtreme Deep Field image. At the time, the Hubble mirror was aimed at a dark spot in the sky that seemed to the naked eye devoid of all light and any stars.
The new telescope is designed to capture light waves in the infrared range, which are important in the study of astronomy; Because most of the visible light from stars is absorbed by the surrounding dust, before it reaches Earth or the Hubble telescope, which is designed to pick up light waves in the visible range.
James Webb’s sensitivity to infrared rays requires keeping it cool and preventing any heat from blocking the rays to be captured. This is the function of the “Sun Shield”, which is the size of a tennis court; It keeps the telescope cool, and blocks the heat of the Earth and the sun.
The James Webb telescope is located today 1.5 million km from Earth, at a point called the “second Lagrangian point”, which is one of the five Lagrangian points; Where there is no gravitational influence because of the equal gravity of the sun and the Earth at these points, which means that by placing the telescope at the “second Lagrangian point”, it can be maintained at a constant distance from the Earth, without the need to consume energy.
What’s lined up for #NASAWebb?
So far, Webb’s mirrors are only aligned with its NIRCam instrument. In the next 6 weeks, the telescope will undergo multi-instrument alignment to be well-aligned across all of its science instruments: https://t.co/STCSqeeJp7 #UnfoldTheUniverse pic.twitter.com/D9FruhABL3
— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) March 18, 2022
Speaking of the James Webb telescope, it is worth stopping at the name that is frustrating to some, as is the custom of politics when it intersects with science. Many scientists in the United States opposed the name attributed to the American government employee James Edwin Webb, who served as the second director of “NASA” between 1961 and 1968, which means that Webb managed “NASA” during its work on the “Apollo” program that was launched to implement the vision John F. Kennedy reaches the moon.
Also in the same period, the US government was pursuing a policy of suppression and exclusion of homosexuals, during which it launched campaigns to expose them in government departments and expel them from their jobs. These campaigns against homosexuals were known as the “Purple Scare”, and extended from the 1950s until the Cold War, similar to the “Red Scare” that renewed in the same period. The government’s anti-gay campaigns even linked the “Purple Scare” to the “Red Scare”, and attacked gays as communist sympathizers or collaborators, and a threat to the security of the United States.
Opponents of the label believe that James Webb adopted these policies and did not oppose them, but rather contributed to them by reporting and participating in government meetings related to anti-homosexual policies. NASA rejected the accusations against Webb, and controversy erupted about the inaccuracy of outrageous quotes attributed to him without evidence.
This, however, does not change the dark history of American policies of oppression and racism, and the silence of science institutes and agencies towards them. Thus, Webb was not alone in either silent about or participating in the repression. Scientific institutions did not move to prevent many forms of oppression against women scientists, or scientists of black skin, and science was not concerned with changing politics, and scientists did not want to be preoccupied with anything other than science.
The Hubble telescope; It is attributed to the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, known for his scientific achievements that demonstrated the expansion of the universe. Indeed, Hubble’s accomplishments depended on the astronomer Henrietta Swan-Levitt, who gained neither the fame nor the opportunity she deserved simply by being a woman. Leavitt was not allowed to be more than a “helper”, and although she was not allowed to use telescopes and laboratories at Harvard College Observatory, nor were women in general, Leavitt devised a method for measuring distances between Earth and distant galaxies, helped Hubble and other Scientists in their research who did not oppose or even acknowledge the exploitation of women.