![]() That idea, however, was quickly dismissed. ![]() It was entirely possible that the seemingly galactic scale objects the authors of the new paper discovered were actually much smaller than they appeared and were simply being optically magnified. As Albert Einstein first postulated, and as more than a century of observations have confirmed, light from a distant object in space can be bent by the gravity of foreground objects, causing it to appear larger than it is-a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. That initial estimate of size, however, could have been an illusion. What’s more, they were big-big enough not to be point sources of light like a bright star or a supernova, but galactic in scale. These half dozen objects were so red they were calculated to be far enough away to have formed up to 13.3 billion years ago. ![]() The redder the color, the farther the object. The universe is continually expanding and as objects move away from us, their wavelength of light is stretched into the red spectrum. It was the color that caught the astronomers’ eyes first. Until then, this new YouTube channel will continually update, including any statements made by NASA.Straightaway, the new survey yielded something intriguing: popping out from the otherwise unremarkable background image were six blotches of light which, though fuzzy, were extremely bright and extremely red. That step will be followed by months of alignment to make sure the instrument is operating optimally.Īll in all, NASA says that barring any major issues, the telescope should begin returning science data by the end of June. After that, the segments of the mirror that were tucked into the Arianne 5 rocket faring will be moved into place, completing the telescopes massive mirror. ![]() OUTLOOK: AFTER YEARS OF WAITING, JAMES WEBB IS ONLY MONTHS AWAYĪs of January 3 rd, the first sun shield was successfully tightened, with the others to follow. “Everything is hunky-dory and doing well now,” said Amy Lo, a lead engineer for Northrop Grumman, the telescope’s primary contractor, after these two issues were resolved and the shield tightening resumed. Fortunately, the team was able to reposition the telescope’s solar panels to increase power and were also able to adjust Webb’s position to eliminate the overheating problem.Ĭhrissy Newton Gets Rebelliously Curious with NASA Astromaterials Expert John E. The James Webb team notes that there have been a few obstacles in the days since its launch, including an overheating issue and a low power issue. “The best thing for operations is boring,” said Ochs of the shield tightening process, “and that’s what we anticipate over the next three days, is to be boring.” The team is now in the process of slowly but surely tightening the five shields, and if all goes right, the series of steps needed to make this happen should be completed by this coming weekend. According to a recent statement from NASA project manager Bill Ochs, that particular step, which involved the successful unlocking of 107 different pins, “was really a huge achievement for us.” While on this journey, the telescope has been methodically going through its deployment steps, including extending its five individual sun shields. ANALYSIS: TRACKING THE TELESCOPES PROGRESS IN REAL TIMEĪs of the posting of this story, the telescope was just over 60% of the way to L2 (LaGrange Point 2), a gravitationally stable spot where the Earth shadows the observatory from sunlight, allowing it to search the much cooler infrared signals from deep space.
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