Month: July 2022

People around the world joined together in excitement as the first color scientific images and spectra from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope were revealed this week. Webb is fully commissioned and already embarked on its first year of peer-reviewed science programs. We asked Webb senior project scientist John Mather to reflect on reaching this moment after 25 years, taking Webb from an initial spark of an idea to the world’s premier space observatory.

“It was worth the wait! Our immense golden telescope is seeing where none have seen before, discovering what we never knew before, and we are proud of what we have done. It’s our day to thank the people who made it possible, from the scientific visionaries in 1989 and 1995, to the 20,000 engineers, technicians, computer programmers, and scientists who did the work, and to the representatives of the people in the U.S., Europe, and Canada, who had faith in us and supported us. And special thanks to Senator Barbara Mikulski, who saved not one but two telescopes, with her inspiration and determination that setbacks are never the end. And special thanks to Goddard Project Manager Bill Ochs and Northrop Grumman Project Manager Scott Willoughby, who together pulled us all through every challenge to complete success.

“Already we have stood on the shoulders of giants like the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, and seen farther. We have seen distant galaxies, as they were when the universe was less than a billion years old, and we’re just beginning the search. We have seen galaxies colliding and merging, revealing their chemical secrets. We have seen one black hole close up, in the nucleus of a nearby galaxy, and measured the material escaping from it. We’ve seen the debris when a star exploded, liberating the chemical elements that will build the next generations of stars and planets. We have started a search for Earth 2.0, by watching a planet transiting in front of its star, and measuring the molecules in its atmosphere.

“What comes next? All the tools are working, better than we hoped and promised. Scientific observations, proposed years ago, are being made as we speak. We want to know: Where did we come from? What happened after the big bang to make galaxies and stars and black holes? We have predictions and guesses, but astronomy is an observational science, full of surprises. What are the dark matter and dark energy doing? How do stars and planets grow inside those beautiful clouds of gas and dust? Do the rocky planets we can observe with Webb have any atmosphere at all, and is there water there? Are there any planetary systems like our solar system? So far we have found exactly none. We’ll look at our own solar system with new infrared eyes, looking for chemical traces of our history, and tracking down mysteries like Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, composition of the ocean under the ice of Europa, and the atmosphere of Saturn’s giant moon Titan. We’ll be ready to study the next interstellar comet.

“With the precise launch on Christmas morning 2021, we look forward to 20 years of operation before we run out of propellant. Though we suffer the pings of tiny micrometeoroids, so tiny you couldn’t feel one if you had it in your fingers, we think the telescope can meet its original performance likely long beyond its five-year design life. In 2027 we will launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will scan vast areas of the sky for new fascinating targets for Webb, while also hunting for the effects of dark matter and dark energy. We know the Webb images will rewrite our textbooks, and we hope for a new discovery, something so important that our view of the universe will be overturned once again.

Webb was worth the wait!”

– John Mather, Webb senior project scientist, NASA Goddard

On the heels of Tuesday’s release of the first images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, data from the telescope’s commissioning period is now being released on the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes. The data includes images of Jupiter and images and spectra of several asteroids, captured to test the telescope’s instruments before science operations officially began July 12. The data demonstrates Webb’s ability to track solar system targets and produce images and spectra with unprecedented detail.

Fans of Jupiter will recognize some familiar features of our solar system’s enormous planet in these images seen through Webb’s infrared gaze. A view from the NIRCam instrument’s short-wavelength filter shows distinct bands that encircle the planet as well as the Great Red Spot, a storm big enough to swallow the Earth. The iconic spot appears white in this image because of the way Webb’s infrared image was processed.

“Combined with the deep field images released the other day, these images of Jupiter demonstrate the full grasp of what Webb can observe, from the faintest, most distant observable galaxies to planets in our own cosmic backyard that you can see with the naked eye from your actual backyard,” said Bryan Holler, a scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who helped plan these observations.

Clearly visible at left is Europa, a moon with a probable ocean below its thick icy crust, and the target of NASA’s forthcoming Europa Clipper mission. What’s more, Europa’s shadow can be seen to the left of the Great Red Spot. Other visible moons in these images include Thebe and Metis.

“I couldn’t believe that we saw everything so clearly, and how bright they were,” said Stefanie Milam, Webb’s deputy project scientist for planetary science based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s really exciting to think of the capability and opportunity that we have for observing these kinds of objects in our solar system.”

Scientists were especially eager to see these images because they are proof that Webb can observe the satellites and rings near bright solar system objects such as Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars. Scientists will use Webb to explore the tantalizing question of whether we can see plumes of material spewing out of moons like Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Webb may be able to see the signatures of plumes depositing material on the surface on Europa. “I think that’s just one of the coolest things that we’ll be able to do with this telescope in the solar system,” Milam said.

Additionally, Webb easily captured some of Jupiter’s rings, which especially stand out in the NIRcam long-wavelength filter image. That the rings showed up in one of Webb’s first solar system images is “absolutely astonishing and amazing,” Milam said.

“The Jupiter images in the narrow-band filters were designed to provide nice images of the entire disk of the planet, but the wealth of additional information about very faint objects (Metis, Thebe, the main ring, hazes) in those images with approximately one-minute exposures was absolutely a very pleasant surprise,” said John Stansberry, observatory scientist and NIRCam commissioning lead at the Space Telescope Science Institute.

Webb also obtained these images of Jupiter and Europa moving across the telescope’s field of view in three separate observations. This test demonstrated the ability of the observatory to find and track guide stars in the vicinity of bright Jupiter.

But just how fast can an object move and still be tracked by Webb? This was an important question for scientists who study asteroids and comets. During commissioning, Webb used an asteroid called 6481 Tenzing, located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, to start the moving-target tracking “speed limit” tests.

Webb was designed with the requirement to track objects that move as fast as Mars, which has a maximum speed of 30 milliarcseconds per second. During commissioning, the Webb team conducted observations of various asteroids, which all appeared as a dot because they were all small. The team proved that Webb will still get valuable data with all of the science instruments for objects moving up to 67 milliarcseconds per second, which is more than twice the expected baseline – similar to photographing a turtle crawling when you’re standing a mile away. “Everything worked brilliantly,” Milam said.

–Elizabeth Landau, NASA Headquarters

Yesterday, NASA and its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency), released the full set of the first full-color images and spectroscopic data from the James Webb Space Telescope.

The images, which uncover a collection of cosmic features elusive until now, are available at: nasa.gov/webbfirstimages.

Learn more.

The months-long process of preparing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope for science is now complete. All of the seventeen ways or ‘modes’ to operate Webb’s scientific instruments have now been checked out, which means that Webb has completed its commissioning activities and is ready to begin full scientific operations.

Each of Webb’s four scientific instruments has multiple modes of operation, utilizing customized lenses, filters, prisms, and specialized machinery that needed to be individually tested, calibrated, and ultimately verified in their operational configuration in space before beginning to capture precise scientific observations of the universe. The last of all seventeen instrument modes to be commissioned was NIRCam’s coronagraph capability, which works to mostly block incoming starlight by inserting a mask in front of a target star, suppressing the target star’s relatively bright light to increase contrast and enable detection of fainter nearby companions such as exoplanets. NIRCam, or the Near-Infrared Camera, is equipped with five coronagraphic masks — three round masks and two bar-shaped masks — that suppress starlight under different conditions of contrast and separation between the star and its companions.

In addition to capturing detailed imagery of the universe, NIRCam is the observatory’s main wavefront sensor that is used to fine-tune the telescope’s optics. It has this double duty by design due to having a comparatively wide field of view and possessing a suite of special internal optics that enable it to take out-of-focus images of stars and even take ‘selfie’ images of the primary mirror itself. The team was able to start aligning the telescope’s optics even while the observatory was still cooling down, because of NIRCam’s ability to safely operate at higher-than-normal, but still cryogenic, operating temperatures.

“From the moment we first took images with NIRCam to start the telescope alignment process to the checkout of coronagraphy at the end of commissioning, NIRCam has performed flawlessly. Observers are going to be very pleased with the data they receive, and I am extremely happy with how 20 years of work by my team are now realized in amazing performance,” said Marcia Rieke, principal investigator for the NIRCam instrument and regents professor of astronomy, University of Arizona.

Webb’s commissioning process culminates tomorrow on July 12, with the release of the telescope’s first full-color images and spectroscopic data, and the official beginning of its science mission.

-Thaddeus Cesari, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Three of the four science instruments on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have completed their commissioning activities and are ready for science.

Each of Webb’s instruments has multiple modes of operation, which need to be tested, calibrated, and ultimately verified before they can begin to conduct science. The latest instrument to complete this process, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph, or NIRSpec, has four key modes the team officially confirmed as ready to go.

“We made it: NIRSpec is ready for science! This is an amazing moment, the result of the hard work of so many JWST and NIRSpec people and teams over more than two decades. I am just so proud of everyone,” said Pierre Ferruit, Webb project scientist with ESA (European Space Agency) and principal investigator for NIRSpec. “Now is time for science, and I am eager to see the first scientific results coming from NIRSpec observations. I have no doubt they will be fantastic. Big thanks to all who made this possible across the years – great job!”

The final mode verified for NIRSpec was the multi-object spectroscopy mode, a key capability that allows Webb to capture spectra, or rainbows of infrared light, from hundreds of different cosmic targets at once. In multi-object spectroscopy mode, NIRSpec can individually open and close about 250,000 small shutters, all just the width of a human hair, to view some portions of the sky while blocking others. By controlling this “microshutter array,” Webb can observe multiple specific targets while reducing interference from others.

The confirmation of NIRSpec’s multi-object spectroscopy mode marks the first time this capability has been verified for use from space. It will allow NIRSpec to characterize everything from the faintest objects in the universe to the formation of galaxies and star clusters.

NIRSpec was built for ESA by a consortium of European companies led by Airbus Defence and Space, with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, providing its detector and microshutter subsystems.

Out of 17 total instrument modes across Webb’s four instruments, only one mode remains to be verified, for the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). When the team confirms this remaining mode, the months-long process of preparing Webb for science will formally be complete.

Webb’s commissioning process culminates on July 12, with the release of the telescope’s first full-color images and spectroscopic data, and the official beginning of its science mission.

As the Webb team wraps up the final tests for commissioning this week, we are now only days away from the public release of the first images and spectra on July 12! This also means that Webb is moving into the phase of full science operations that includes a highly impressive suite of science programs from the solar system to the distant universe. The entire Webb team is ready to celebrate the long journey to this point and embark on the next few decades of groundbreaking infrared astronomy.

Eric Smith, Webb program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, has been with Webb since its beginnings in the mid-1990s. We asked him to share his thoughts as we finalize commissioning and prepare for the first images release next week:

“Even after working on the program for many years, I’m as excited as everyone else who is anticipating the release of the first beautiful full-color images and data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope – an audacious endeavor in partnership with the European and Canadian space agencies. From a professional perspective, I’m thrilled with the mission and the realization that astronomers around the world will receive an amazing new tool to explore space. Webb joins existing Great Observatories, like NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, giving scientists ‘eyes’ from Webb’s infrared vision through the visible, ultraviolet part of the spectrum to X-rays. A fantastic new era is upon us as these powerful facilities complement one another to investigate the cosmos.

“Yet, as stunning as these capabilities are, NASA is always looking to the future. Even today, we are constructing the next great observatory that will come after Webb, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Unlike the existing facilities, Roman is designed to capture images of huge portions of the sky all at once, allowing scientists to look for very rare and even time-variable phenomena. This impressive survey capability will come online in the latter half of the decade. As if that is not amazing enough, we’ve begun to think about how we might build a telescope specifically designed to image and study nearby exoplanets in ways impossible today even with Webb. All the facilities we currently have, and those in the planning stage, arose from questions ignited by astronomers seeking to answer age-old questions about our universe using previous observatories. What questions might Webb observations raise now that will turn our curiosity to things unimagined? We will soon begin to know how Webb will transform our understanding of the universe.

“On a personal level, my family was recently blessed with the arrival of our first grandchild. Watching her awaken to her surroundings rejuvenates the world for me. Anyone who has been a parent, aunt, uncle, grandparent, or had the fortune to spend time with infants and toddlers may have experienced this joy in seeing the curiosity and interest of someone experiencing fresh and novel sights and sounds. With each blink and head turn, they learn more about the place they live, constantly developing and improving their own conceptions about what different and initially strange things are and how they relate to them. With each blink and head turn, their new perspective recalls for us distant memories when all was new and exciting in the world. These joyful moments of seeing things for the first time through the eyes of a child are experienced at the individual level and in small family gatherings. Rarer are the moments when we can collectively experience this rush of discovery and wonder. The James Webb Space Telescope will give us a fresh and powerful set of eyes to examine our universe.

Blink

The world is about to be new again.”

– Eric Smith, Webb program scientist, NASA Headquarters

We are less than one week away from the release of the first full-color images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, but how does the observatory find and lock onto its targets? Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) – developed by the Canadian Space Agency – was designed with this particular question in mind. Recently it captured a view of stars and galaxies that provides a tantalizing glimpse at what the telescope’s science instruments will reveal in the coming weeks, months, and years.

FGS has always been capable of capturing imagery, but its primary purpose is to enable accurate science measurements and imaging with precision pointing. When it does capture imagery, the imagery is typically not kept: Given the limited communications bandwidth between L2 and Earth, Webb only sends data from up to two science instruments at a time. But during a week-long stability test in May, it occurred to the team that they could keep the imagery that was being captured because there was available data transfer bandwidth.

The resulting engineering test image has some rough-around-the-edges qualities to it. It was not optimized to be a science observation; rather, the data was taken to test how well the telescope could stay locked onto a target, but it does hint at the power of the telescope. It carries a few hallmarks of the views Webb has produced during its postlaunch preparations. Bright stars stand out with their six, long, sharply defined diffraction spikes – an effect due to Webb’s six-sided mirror segments. Beyond the stars, galaxies fill nearly the entire background.

The result – using 72 exposures over 32 hours – is among the deepest images of the universe ever taken, according to Webb scientists. When FGS’ aperture is open, it is not using color filters like the other science instruments – meaning it is impossible to study the age of the galaxies in this image with the rigor needed for scientific analysis. But even when capturing unplanned imagery during a test, FGS is capable of producing stunning views of the cosmos.

“With the Webb telescope achieving better-than-expected image quality, early in commissioning we intentionally defocused the guiders by a small amount to help ensure they met their performance requirements. When this image was taken, I was thrilled to clearly see all the detailed structure in these faint galaxies. Given what we now know is possible with deep broad-band guider images, perhaps such images, taken in parallel with other observations where feasible, could prove scientifically useful in the future,” said Neil Rowlands, program scientist for Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor, at Honeywell Aerospace.

Because this image was not created with a science result in mind, there are a few features that are quite different than the full-resolution images that will be released July 12. Those images will include what will be – for a short time at least – the deepest image of the universe ever captured, as NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced on June 29.

The FGS image is colored using the same reddish color scheme that has been applied to Webb’s other engineering images throughout commissioning. In addition, there was no “dithering” during these exposures. Dithering is when the telescope repositions slightly between each exposure. In addition, the centers of bright stars appear black because they saturate Webb’s detectors, and the pointing of the telescope didn’t change over the exposures to capture the center from different pixels within the camera’s detectors. The overlapping frames of the different exposures can also be seen at the image’s edges and corners.

In this engineering test, the purpose was to lock onto one star and to test how well Webb could control its “roll” – literally, Webb’s ability to roll to one side like an aircraft in flight. That test was performed successfully – in addition to producing an image that sparks the imagination of scientists who will be analyzing Webb’s science data, said Jane Rigby, Webb’s operations scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“The faintest blobs in this image are exactly the types of faint galaxies that Webb will study in its first year of science operations,” Rigby said.

While Webb’s four science instruments will ultimately reveal the telescope’s new view of the universe, the Fine Guidance Sensor is the one instrument that will be used in every single Webb observation over the course of the mission’s lifetime. FGS has already played a crucial role in aligning Webb’s optics. Now, during the first real science observations made in June and once science operations begin in mid-July, it will guide each Webb observation to its target and maintain the precision necessary for Webb to produce breakthrough discoveries about stars, exoplanets, galaxies, and even moving targets within our solar system.

By Patrick Lynch, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

 

The public release of Webb’s first images and spectra is July 12 – now less than two weeks away! The Webb team has confirmed that that 15 out of 17 instrument modes are ready for science, with just two more still to go. As we near the end of commissioning, we wanted to let you know where you can see the first Webb science data and how to participate in the celebration of Webb science! Here are all the ways you can #UnfoldTheUniverse with Webb:

Countdown: How many minutes left? The official countdown is at https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/countdown.html

Watch: See the images revealed in real-time and hear from experts about the exciting results on NASA TV at 10:30am Eastern on July 12: https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive

View: Just interested in the amazing imagery? You will be able to find the first images and spectra at: https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages

Participate: Attend, virtually or in-person, one of hundreds of official Webb Space Telescope Community Events happening in the next few months! Find an event near you at: https://webbtelescope.org/news/first-images/events

Socialize: Follow along on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram with @NASA and @NASAWebb using #UnfoldTheUniverse!

Download: High-resolution downloads and supplemental content will be available for download at: https://webbtelescope.org/news/first-images

Ask: On July 13, ask your questions about these first images and spectra using #UnfoldtheUniverse, and you could see them answered on NASA Science Live at: https://www.nasa.gov/nasasciencelive

We look forward to celebrating the official kickoff of Webb science with you soon!

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– Alexandra Lockwood, project scientist for Webb science communications, Space Telescope Science Institute

-Stefanie Milam, Webb deputy project scientist for planetary science, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

-Jonathan Gardner, Webb deputy senior project scientist, NASA Goddard