james webb space telescope reached
operational temperature
what now
on december 25th of 2021 something
incredible happened the james webb
telescope was launched
this event is going to change science
and our entire understanding of the
world
an observational challenge in
astrophysics will be finally solved with
the help of this powerful instrument
james webb is going to study the
earliest ancient universe and it will
unveil so many different mysteries
generations of astronomers will work on
jwst data reduction and will try to
provide us with new knowledge about the
universe
since its launch in december the
telescope has undergone adjustments and
has been getting ready to begin its
official mission
at the same time it was cooling down the
cooling of a telescope is essential to
its mission because if the telescope is
too hot unwanted defects can appear on
the images it's going to take
of course we don't want that to happen
today we're going to talk a little bit
more about some of the recent updates
and discover what the james webb
telescope has been up to during the last
period and more importantly what is
going to happen during summer and by the
end of the year
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the recently released images from jwst
show the quality of the image and the
sharpness of four of the main
instruments on the telescope
scientists can see that everything has
been finally aligned
and everything is aligned perfectly
jwst also seems to be working just as
expected and maybe better
in fact every tested instrument is doing
better than the team was expecting
and needless to say it seems to be
producing amazing images
differently from what a planet does
around the sun or from what the moon
does around the earth the james webb is
orbiting around a point in space
this point is actually a dynamical
equilibrium point and it is called l2
named after the mathematician lagrange
who gave a description of such a
dynamical system we actually have five
such equilibrium points in the sun earth
system and they are points in space
around which we place our telescopes to
better observe the universe
you can find l2 on the line connecting
the sun and the earth from the earth's
side
l1 lies on the same line but between the
sun and the earth while l3 is on the
sun's side
l4 and l5 are more special points and
are called equilateral points because
they are found to form a triangular
shape with the sun and the earth
due to their positions different
lagrangian points can be used to observe
different parts of the universe
for example a satellite orbiting around
l1 is good to observe the sun and
monitor solar spots
instead one placed in l2 has an
advantageous point of view on outer
space and stars as jwst has
l2 is located approximately one and a
half million kilometers from planet
earth
actual position varies between 250 000
kilometers and 832 000 kilometers from
l2 as it orbits keeping it out of both
earth and moon's shadow
by way of comparison hubble orbits 550
kilometers or 340 miles above earth's
surface and the moon is roughly 400 000
kilometers or 250 000 miles from earth
objects near this sun earth l2 point can
orbit the sun in synchrony with the
earth allowing the telescope to remain
at a roughly constant distance
what we can say is that while jwst was
orbiting l2 in march approximately a
couple of months ago the mirrors were
officially aligned this is an important
step for a telescope because if we can't
align the mirrors we simply can't take
images of the universe
or if mirrors are misaligned our
pictures are going to be really bad ones
in this image we can see the first image
visible from jwst
it shows a random star this star is in
the middle of nowhere and wasn't
particularly bright either
it seems to be just an image like any
other but if you take a better look at
it you will soon realize that many many
galaxies are found behind the star
take into consideration that this was
just a random image with no particular
observational aim based on a very
preliminary observation
do you have any idea on how many
different galaxies we're going to be
discovering during the next months or
years
i honestly can't wait for james webb to
be fully operational
i'm also sure that you have noticed the
spikes around the star
what are they why are they formed
is this an image defect
well these spikes are technically image
defects and one can have different
spikes depending on the shape of the
mirror of the telescope the james webb
mirror is a hexagonal shaped mirror
formed by smaller mirrors
such spikes do not only affect the main
star but also all the other stars in the
telescope's field of view but don't
worry astronomers know how to extract
these spikes and how to get rid of them
it's all about data reduction once you
know quite well the properties of your
telescope you can in general get rid
somehow of instrumental defects the real
news about james webb however is that
over a week ago
the agency announced that the
combination of the sun shield and the
active cryo cooler that's responsible
for cooling down the mid infrared
instrument also called miri has
officially succeeded now the telescope
temperature is about six to seven kelvin
this is its operational temperature
six kelvin is an extremely low
temperature so close to absolute zero
the ideal case for a telescope not
affected by instrumental heating in
short term now the telescope is fully
operational and ready to observe
but more interesting news came from gaia
gaia is an ambitious mission to chart a
three-dimensional map of our galaxy the
milky way in the process revealing the
composition formation and evolution of
the galaxy
gaia will provide unprecedented
positional and radial velocity
measurements with the accuracies needed
to produce a stereoscopic and kinematic
senses of about one billion stars in our
galaxy and throughout the local group
this amounts to about one percent of the
galactic stellar population
gaia also orbits around the l two
lagrangian point as you can see in this
picture which shows the orbits of the
james webb space telescope in white and
gaia in yellow around l2
and on february 18th gaia managed to
spot the newcomer and catch an image of
it on the very first try
very little reflected sunlight came guys
way and the web therefore appears as a
tiny faint speck of light in guys two
telescopes without any details visible
guy is not designed to take real
pictures of celestial objects esa noted
instead it collects very precise
measurements of their positions motions
distances and colors
however one part of the instruments on
board takes a sort of sky image it is
the finder scope of gaia also called the
sky mapper
the sky mapper scans a narrow 360 degree
strip around the entire celestial sphere
every six hours the successive strips
are slightly tilted with respect to each
other so that every few months the
entire sky is covered touching
everything that's there and that's
bright enough to be seen by gaia
that's quite impressive but what's more
important is this image
i know you probably aren't an astronomer
and to your eyes this picture may say
nothing special but this picture really
shows that jwst is working properly
every other dot you see in this image is
a galaxy somewhere out there with
millions of stars and every image from
every instrument has a lot of different
dots on them
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believe me all the observations are
going to be absolutely amazing we will
see the universe as we never did before
but james webb will also help us unveil
secrets of our own galaxy the milky way
this is because the telescope works best
in the infrared domain of light
moreover james webb will provide us with
mind-blowing results on exoplanets and
nearby planetary systems
it's funny how we always talk about such
discoveries as something that will
happen in the remote future
but be aware that the future is already
happening
in fact the telescope seems actually
ready to go
from now on only minor changes to the
mirrors are going to be done depending
on the orientation the telescope will
assume according to its own motion
james webb will effectively start its
mission during summer because even if
the telescope is in general ready every
instrument has to be wisely calibrated
and every individual team has still a
lot of work to do in order for the james
webb to perform at its best
earlier we said web will change its
orientation during its motion but why is
that
is there a particularly good reason why
it's going to change its orientation in
space
well as we've already said we want our
telescope and instruments to be as cool
as we can this can be done by limiting
the amount of solar radiation hitting
the instruments
one way to limit this is indeed changing
the orientation of the observatory
webb uses a large sun shield to block
light and heat from the sun earth and
moon and its position near the sun earth
l2 keeps all three bodies on the same
side of the spacecraft at all times
the five layer sun shield each layer is
thin as a human hair is constructed from
captain e a commercially available
polamide film with membranes specially
coated with aluminum on both sides and a
layer of doped silicon on the sun-facing
side of the two hottest layers to
reflect the sun's heat back into space
accidental tears of the delicate film
structure during testing in 2018 were
among the factors delaying the project
the sun shield was designed to be folded
12 times so that it fits within the
ariane 5 rocket's payload fairing
because of the sun shield jwst does not
have an unlimited field of regard at any
given time
the telescope can see 40 of the sky from
one position and can see all the skies
over a period of six months the amount
of time it takes to complete half its
orbit around the sun
but the most important part is going to
start in the summer when web will start
460 hours of observations
during these 460 hours webb will try to
provide us with brand new knowledge
about six main topics such as galaxies
and intergalactic medium galaxies
massive black holes planet formation
stellar physics and stellar populations
all we want is for us to have these
programs observe things really quickly
and release all of their data as fast as
possible so that scientists can start
working on data reduction and come to
some new conclusions
that's all for this video thanks for
watching everyone what do you think
about this video are you in love as we
are with the james webb space telescope
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time on the channel