The AAS meeting is over, and I appear to have recovered from my viral loading. As usual, I had a lot of fun, but unfortunately time was short. I did get to briefly meet with a few other bloggers (notably Stein Sigurdsson, Rob Knop, my old pals Pamela and Michael and Aaron, and the wonderful Jennifer Ouellette, who came to my skeptical talk only to watch me flee in panic).
I did have one meetup that looms larger than the others… quite literally. Northrup Grumman is building the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to Hubble. It’s a monster, with a 6 meter mirror, and a sunshade that is as big as a tennis court. But why describe it with words, when the magic of YouTube awaits?
It was freezing when I recorded that, and I was still recovering from my, um, incident, so I was not at the top of my game then. The traffic noise was a pain, too, but all in all I think it turned out OK. I need to get a monopod for my webcam.
Since the vid is a little fuzzy, here is a nicer image (click it for a high-res version on Flickr):
This model was very impressive. Check out the mirror assembly!
I have several friends who work on JWST and I tease them a lot about cost overruns and delays. But in all seriousness, when this thing goes up, it will be one major fracking piece of hardware. It will revolutionize our knowledge of the Universe, and that’s one of the main reasons we’re in this game in the first place.
January 15th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Oh, I am glad you got photos. That was a cool model. I meant to take photos on Wednesday, but they were already taking it down when I got my camera!
January 15th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
so is the new scope going to be 100 percent infrared or a mix like hubble? would kinda miss the nice visible pics hubble has taken over the past 15 years
January 15th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
It’s just infrared. They decided a while ago that adding an optical camera would be too expensive. This Webb scope is more of a successor to the Spitzer scope than to the Hubble.
Saying I, “would kind of miss the visible pics,” would be a massive understatement. I am already going into preemptive mourning for the HST.
January 15th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
I don’t see why infra-red pics should be any less, er, cool. Look
at the Spitzer Eagle Nebula pic (http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2007-01/release.shtml)
January 16th, 2007 at 12:09 am
I love those new video blogs
January 16th, 2007 at 1:06 am
[...] No modelo em escala natural acima, os dezoito hexágonos amarelos representam os componentes do espelho refletor primário, que será mesmo composto destes múltiplos refletores — simplesmente não é possível lançar um refletor inteiro com mais de seis metros de diâmetro. Os dezoito componentes irão compor um único refletor já no espaço, em um processo não tão diferente dos Transformers. As folhas prateadas abaixo são o protetor solar, maior que um campo de tênis. [via Bad Astronomy blog] [...]
January 16th, 2007 at 2:15 am
Nice, thanks! Great job giving a sense of scale–it’s so hard to do!
January 16th, 2007 at 2:53 am
Great post, Phil! I was just wondering, how are they going to service this telescope when it is so far away? Am I right that it is going to be placed beyond the reach of the Space Shuttle (or, for that matter, its successor)?
January 16th, 2007 at 5:31 am
If I recall correctly, there will be no servicing of the JWST. It will be a million miles away – far beyond the reach of any human-carrying vessel we have today. It has to work for the first time. I imagine this makes for many sleepless nights amongst the engineers involved.
January 16th, 2007 at 5:34 am
PK,
No servicing possible, or designed for. Same story for Spitzer, and most other spacecraft (Hubble is one of a rare breed, in that and many other ways).
Lorne
January 16th, 2007 at 5:53 am
Freezing? there’s not even any snow! That’s not freezing, that’s just a long autumn!
That thing is sure a VERY nice telescope! I can’t wait to see it in action (I’ll have to though…) and I had no idea these sheets were even part of the thing! It’s simply looking awesome.
January 16th, 2007 at 6:50 am
A million miles? Will it orbit the Earth or the Sun at one of those points (L2 or something – brain not working)?
January 16th, 2007 at 8:59 am
I went out one night and took some night photos — there’s one posted
scroll down a few screens to get to the pic. It was tough to photograph, to even get a good angle on it. But,very nice to see it in “real” size.
January 16th, 2007 at 9:12 am
Nice video Phil!
January 16th, 2007 at 9:34 am
The video blogs are great fun, Phil — keep ‘em coming.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Man, I miss Seattle.
Fun video though.
January 16th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
A six meter mirror, you say?
IIRC, Hubble’s is one meter, yes? Or a bit more?
Too bad it’s not optical. But still a cool ’scope.
January 16th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
[...] The one thing that I am most disappointed in is that I didn’t get a photo of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) mockup that was set up outside the convention center. For those of you who don’t know, the JWST is slated to be Hubble’s replacement. It won’t really just replace the Hubble Space Telescope, though. JWST will be much bigger than HST, and it will focus on infrared studies. I’ll have a whole post on it later. But, the last day of the conference, when I had planned to photograph the model, they were taking it down! But, it turns out that Phil took photos and posted on his blog. Go look at them. That is a life sized model. It is HUGE. You know how big it is from reading the specifications, but it really sinks in when you see it. I had so wanted to get photos, but I fooled around and missed my opportunity. Thankfully others got photos! [...]
January 16th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
The Hubble mirror is 2.4 m across; the whole thing is often described as about the size of a small bus.
January 16th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Carey,
To be very pedantic, I think one should say that the JWST will orbit the L2 point. To be less pedantic, its actual path will take it around the Sun once per year so that it will always remain at approximately the same distance from the Earth. The SOHO satellite already does something similar at the L1 point.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:14 am
The Orion should be able to reach it quite easily. Since it wouldn’t need to carry along a moon lander, nor the fuel to go in and out of lunar orbit, it should be able to carry quite a considerable payload. I wonder if NASA has given any consideration to this possibility. I did read something recently that they are thinking about a mission to a near-earth asterlod, which would be similar but take longer.
January 21st, 2007 at 5:10 am
Edison Carter.
That’s what I think about when I see you recording yourself like that