Description
In the summer of 2022, the first stunning images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) were released.
Quick Look
Info: 2 pages, 44 ques + key
Format: MS Word & PDF
Video link: https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/ultimate-space-telescope
Other resources ($): Google Forms, Google Docs
The worksheet consists of 44 multiple choice and matching questions that follow the video, and a key is included. The zip file download features MS Word and PDF versions of the video questions. You will need to obtain a DVD of the video or locate an internet site for streaming.
NOVA: Ultimate Space Telescope documents the history of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the release of the first images taken by the telescope in the summer of 2022. Named for the NASA administrator who led the agency during the Apollo years, the JWST is the successor to the fabled Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Subject to years of delays and cost overruns, the telescope was in danger of never being completed, but scientists and engineers spent decades building, testing, and ultimately deploying the telescope to a position in space one million miles from earth.
Overview: NOVA: Ultimate Space Telescope
In the summer of 2022, the first stunning images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) were released. After years of cost overruns and delays, the telescope had finally been launched in the winter of 2021. The NOVA documentary Ultimate Space Telescope tells the story of the construction and sendoff of the telescope and its promise to revolutionize the field of astronomy.
The JWST is the successor of the fabled Hubble Space Telescope. After an inauspicious start in the 1990s, the Hubble has since produced thousands of iconic images including the first “deep fields”. These images were obtained by staring at a blank patch of sky for many days. Hubble revealed that, in an apparently blank patch of sky, were thousands of galaxies, the farthest ever observed. Many of the galaxies in the Deep Field appeared red, and this is due to their light being “redshifted” due to the expansion of the universe. Today astronomers realize that the universe is expanding and that the light from distant galaxies is reddened by this motion. Telescopes also are able to look into the past because they collect light that has taken many years, sometimes thousands, millions, or even billions of years, to reach us. The oldest galaxies in the universe have been redshifted so much that they emit mostly in the near infrared part of the spectrum, a part of the light spectrum not visible to human eyes. Hubble was designed to image mostly in the visible spectrum. In contrast, the JWST will be able to reveal infrared images of the earliest galaxies in the universe.
The JWST was originally meant to be launched in 2007, but overly optimistic early appraisals turned out to be incorrect, and the telescope was nearly canceled by the US congress. Testing and building the telescope provided immense challenges. The telescope needed to operate in the extremely cold temperatures of outer space at a location named L2 which lies one million miles from earth. This also means that the JWST cannot be serviced. The Hubble Space Telescope was accessible to the Space Shuttle, and its early problems with an incorrectly ground mirror were able to be fixed by spacewalking astronauts. The Webb telescope was tested in an immense vacuum chamber. Later, a vibration test resulted in tiny screws falling from the telescope. Another scandal involved James Webb, the NASA administrator who led the agency during the Apollo missions. It was revealed that Webb had been involved with the firing of gay and lesbian employees in the federal government who were labeled “perverts”. A petition was signed by astronomers and scientists to removes Webb’s name from the telescope, but the head of NASA concluded that this wasn’t warranted.
As the largest space telescope ever built, the JWST was challenging to transport and launch into space. The telescope was placed into a mobile clean room and driven from Maryland to California. Here it was placed on a ship and carried to French Guiana where it was launched. Once launched, the telescope had to be separated from the rocket and sent towards its distant location 1 million miles from earth. The solar panels were first deployed, then the five layer thick sunshield-as large in area as a tennis court-was slowly unfurled, and finally the 18 segment hexagonal mirror was unfolded. Originally the telescope had been folded into a compact volume in order to fit within a rocket. The engineers essentially rebuilt the telescope in space after it was launched. The telescope also presented 344 “points of failure” beyond which further progress was impossible. Luckily the engineers were able to successfully deploy the telescope and avoid every point of failure.
Telescopes operate like “light buckets”, and the larger a telescope’s main mirror the more light it can collect. JWST’s large mirror is a mosaic of 18 smaller hexagonal mirrors, each of which is as large as a small table-top. Each mirror segment is coated with gold because it is an excellent infrared light reflector. After launching and setting up, the mirrors needed to be aligned in order to operate as one single large mirror 21 feet in diameter. This procedure was accomplished by imaging a single bright star with the telescope and slowly moving and tweaking the mirrors using actuators located behind each mirror segment. Initially 18 star images were visible, and these were slowly focused and merged into a single image.
The first images from the JWST were released in July 2022, and this NOVA documentary was made available right afterwards. Images show incredible detail in space objects such as the Carina and Southern Ring nebulas. Another exposure, Webb’s first Deep Field image, shows thousands of galaxies located in an area of sky as wide as a grain of sand held at arm’s length! The image also presents distant galaxies distorted into stretched out shapes similar to melting clocks in a Dali painting. These galaxies are distorted by gravity which can bend light and produce these phantasmagoric images. These photos represent just the beginning of what the JWST will reveal about the universe.
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Description
In the summer of 2022, the first stunning images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) were released.
Quick Look
Info: 2 pages, 44 ques + key
Format: MS Word & PDF
Video link: https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/ultimate-space-telescope
Other resources ($): Google Forms, Google Docs
The worksheet consists of 44 multiple choice and matching questions that follow the video, and a key is included. The zip file download features MS Word and PDF versions of the video questions. You will need to obtain a DVD of the video or locate an internet site for streaming.
NOVA: Ultimate Space Telescope documents the history of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the release of the first images taken by the telescope in the summer of 2022. Named for the NASA administrator who led the agency during the Apollo years, the JWST is the successor to the fabled Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Subject to years of delays and cost overruns, the telescope was in danger of never being completed, but scientists and engineers spent decades building, testing, and ultimately deploying the telescope to a position in space one million miles from earth.
Overview: NOVA: Ultimate Space Telescope
In the summer of 2022, the first stunning images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) were released. After years of cost overruns and delays, the telescope had finally been launched in the winter of 2021. The NOVA documentary Ultimate Space Telescope tells the story of the construction and sendoff of the telescope and its promise to revolutionize the field of astronomy.
The JWST is the successor of the fabled Hubble Space Telescope. After an inauspicious start in the 1990s, the Hubble has since produced thousands of iconic images including the first “deep fields”. These images were obtained by staring at a blank patch of sky for many days. Hubble revealed that, in an apparently blank patch of sky, were thousands of galaxies, the farthest ever observed. Many of the galaxies in the Deep Field appeared red, and this is due to their light being “redshifted” due to the expansion of the universe. Today astronomers realize that the universe is expanding and that the light from distant galaxies is reddened by this motion. Telescopes also are able to look into the past because they collect light that has taken many years, sometimes thousands, millions, or even billions of years, to reach us. The oldest galaxies in the universe have been redshifted so much that they emit mostly in the near infrared part of the spectrum, a part of the light spectrum not visible to human eyes. Hubble was designed to image mostly in the visible spectrum. In contrast, the JWST will be able to reveal infrared images of the earliest galaxies in the universe.
The JWST was originally meant to be launched in 2007, but overly optimistic early appraisals turned out to be incorrect, and the telescope was nearly canceled by the US congress. Testing and building the telescope provided immense challenges. The telescope needed to operate in the extremely cold temperatures of outer space at a location named L2 which lies one million miles from earth. This also means that the JWST cannot be serviced. The Hubble Space Telescope was accessible to the Space Shuttle, and its early problems with an incorrectly ground mirror were able to be fixed by spacewalking astronauts. The Webb telescope was tested in an immense vacuum chamber. Later, a vibration test resulted in tiny screws falling from the telescope. Another scandal involved James Webb, the NASA administrator who led the agency during the Apollo missions. It was revealed that Webb had been involved with the firing of gay and lesbian employees in the federal government who were labeled “perverts”. A petition was signed by astronomers and scientists to removes Webb’s name from the telescope, but the head of NASA concluded that this wasn’t warranted.
As the largest space telescope ever built, the JWST was challenging to transport and launch into space. The telescope was placed into a mobile clean room and driven from Maryland to California. Here it was placed on a ship and carried to French Guiana where it was launched. Once launched, the telescope had to be separated from the rocket and sent towards its distant location 1 million miles from earth. The solar panels were first deployed, then the five layer thick sunshield-as large in area as a tennis court-was slowly unfurled, and finally the 18 segment hexagonal mirror was unfolded. Originally the telescope had been folded into a compact volume in order to fit within a rocket. The engineers essentially rebuilt the telescope in space after it was launched. The telescope also presented 344 “points of failure” beyond which further progress was impossible. Luckily the engineers were able to successfully deploy the telescope and avoid every point of failure.
Telescopes operate like “light buckets”, and the larger a telescope’s main mirror the more light it can collect. JWST’s large mirror is a mosaic of 18 smaller hexagonal mirrors, each of which is as large as a small table-top. Each mirror segment is coated with gold because it is an excellent infrared light reflector. After launching and setting up, the mirrors needed to be aligned in order to operate as one single large mirror 21 feet in diameter. This procedure was accomplished by imaging a single bright star with the telescope and slowly moving and tweaking the mirrors using actuators located behind each mirror segment. Initially 18 star images were visible, and these were slowly focused and merged into a single image.
The first images from the JWST were released in July 2022, and this NOVA documentary was made available right afterwards. Images show incredible detail in space objects such as the Carina and Southern Ring nebulas. Another exposure, Webb’s first Deep Field image, shows thousands of galaxies located in an area of sky as wide as a grain of sand held at arm’s length! The image also presents distant galaxies distorted into stretched out shapes similar to melting clocks in a Dali painting. These galaxies are distorted by gravity which can bend light and produce these phantasmagoric images. These photos represent just the beginning of what the JWST will reveal about the universe.
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