I knew it looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it until my son happened to mention it:
The SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage that launched last week has now racked up 10 launches - at an average of one every two months - and has carried 550 satellites plus one cargo dragon and one crew dragon to orbit.
JWST has already completed more than 95% of the way to L2
By the way, there is a cool explanation of L points
That makes me laugh the most these day
JWST first images will not look the way we expect them to
“The first images are going to be ugly. It is going to be blurry. We’ll [have] 18 of these little images all over the sky”. - Rigby told reporters during a livestreamed press conference on Saturday (Jan. 8) discussing the successful deployment of Webb’s 21.3-foot-wide (6.3 meters) primary mirror that day. Rigby was speaking from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, where telescope operations are centered.
There was nothing said about the publishing of first “ugly” images. But it’s expected that on ~Day 120 of the mission (April 24) the telescope is going to see more precisely, because the alignment will have been completed by that time.
As far as I remember, it was previously told that the images were being expected in ~June
As a matter of fact, there is the first Hubble image ever taken:
https://www.nasa.gov/content/hubbles-first-light
JonRowe
4919
So fricking excited for this!!!
jpinard
4920
Hubble’s first image didn’t appear to have much aberration that I could see from the mirror being shaped wrong.
Better than this maybe…
Anyone else here know this pic? I go to it every once in a while just to see how far we’ve come.
EDIT: Ok, fine you joystealers. It’s the first Astronomy Pic of the Day (apod.nasa.gov)
Really interesting (to me) to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the APOD archive page. I’ve been doing astrophotography for a bit over a year, and it’s amazing how good the photos are from a novice with entry-level equipment compared to the best amateur efforts of the mid-1990s.
Yup. I used to do that all the time but haven’t in a while. But that just means I have a lot of new (for me) pics. And I keep talking about getting into some low level astrophotography. It just seems so much easier to do now than the last time I had a good scope (early 2000s).
The biggest change is good, affordable CMOS cameras. Amateur-level CCD cameras used to cost many thousands of dollars (they still make some, and they’re still outrageously expensive). I bought my CMOS camera used for $600.
It looks familiar for real, cool!
But I think these guys are the real engineers of JWST mirrors
I didn’t even know that this archive exists, thank you
Was curious about a photo that had been made on my birthday day
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap960226.html
It’s called “Fireball”. What photo was made on your b-day?
Webb arrives at L2 tomorrow. An insertion burn will put it into its orbital parking spot for the next 20 years. It’s been a helluva month, and pretty much all the scary stuff is behind us.
Hooray, JWST has finally arrived, congratulations! Now waiting for the alignment finished to start focusing the telescope for the first photos!
TechRadar jumping the gun. This is just now, hours after that was published
The L2 insertion burn is scheduled for 2PM (EST) today, with a livestream and webconf briefing in the hours following.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-discuss-webb-s-arrival-at-final-destination-next-steps
jpinard
4932
Hope it goes according to plan so we don’t lose any extended mission time.
Menzo
4933
Insertion burn completed!
