![]() ![]() ![]() The MIRI instrument was co-developed by JPL and the European Space Agency. ![]() The other three are the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which will observe the light of distant galaxies, newly forming stars, and faintly visible comets as well as objects in the Kuiper Belt the Near InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec), which will perform high-resolution spectroscopic observations of 100 cosmic objects simultaneously and the Fine Guidance Sensor/Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (FGS/NIRISS), which will conduct lower-resolution spectroscopic measurements to characterize the light from the universe's first stars as well as exoplanets. NIRCam is one of four major JWST instruments to observe the sky in various wavelengths. Using a set of coronagraphic masks developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which Caltech manages for NASA, to block the bright glare of host stars, Beichman and the NIRCam team will search for Saturn-sized exoplanets orbiting bright, nearby stars including epsilon Eri and Vega. NIRCam will detect light from the earliest stars and galaxies as they are in the process of formation as well as from populations of stars in nearby galaxies young stars in our Milky Way galaxy planets orbiting nearby stars and Kuiper Belt objects at the fringes of our solar system. "For JWST, it's a sort of 29 days of anxiety for everything to happen perfectly."īeichman, whose primary research focus is planets outside our solar system, or exoplanets, is a member of the science team for one of JWST's instruments, the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam). "With the Mars missions, they have something they call the 'seven minutes of terror'-the time window in which everything has to happen precisely for the landing," says Charles Beichman, senior faculty associate in astronomy and director of the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech. Once there, JWST will complete a six-month process of post-launch commissioning: it will unfold its mirrors, sun-shield, and other systems, and cool down, align, and calibrate. After launch, the telescope will begin a one-month odyssey to its observing perch beyond the moon, an orbital location in space called the second Lagrange point or L2, which is about 1 million miles from Earth. The launch represents a major milestone for the project, which began construction back in 2004. JWST has a mirror that is 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) across, making it physically much larger than the Hubble Space Telescope and Hubble's infrared sister telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, operated by Caltech's IPAC it also has state-of-the-art photon detectors that register a wider range of wavelengths and enable deeper and more detailed views than Spitzer. With unprecedented technology, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will peer both near and far, from the planets and bodies in our solar system to the deepest reaches of space, where the first stars and galaxies formed more than 13 billion years ago. Optical components of the telescope’s cameras can be seen in the foreground.On December 25, the largest and most powerful space telescope ever constructed by NASA was successfully launched from Earth. Dressed in clean room attire, members of the Inauguration delegation visit the Inouye Solar Telescope’s instrument laboratory, called the Coudé Lab. The telescope is located near the summit of Haleakalā on the island of Maui in Hawaii. Inouye Solar Telescope to recognize the telescope’s inauguration on August 31st, 2022. A delegation of NSF leaders, congressional dignitaries, and members of both the scientific and Native Hawaiian communities gathered at the NSF’s Daniel K. The telescope’s OCP began back in February and has since then gathered data for more than 20 of the accepted scientific proposals and has conducted initial coordinated solar observations with NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and ESA/NASA’s Solar Orbiter. ![]() Back then, the NSF wanted to create the world’s most powerful ground-based solar observatory to help answer questions about solar physics and space weather and how they might impact Earth. The Inouye Solar Telescope was originally proposed 25 years ago. To put that in perspective, the below graphic shows the size of the Earth compared to the imaged area. ![]()
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