Artistic mural of the James Webb SpaceTelescope Credit: NASA
A “game changing” brand-new telescope will be blasted into area tonight to start a lonesome 1.5-million-kilometer orbit around the Sun to offer a clearer view of the ever-expanding universe.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the biggest telescope ever to be introduced into area and will be utilized by University of Queensland scientists to observe asteroids and newborn worlds, in addition to great voids in remote galaxies.
UQ astrophysicistDr Benjamin Pope stated he’s thrilled by the abilities of the JWST, extensively thought about as the follower to the renowned Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which introduced in 1990.
In order to spot the most remote and earliest galaxies, the telescope requires to be big and kept exceptionally cold. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
“The JWST will go dramatically beyond what any telescope has been able to do — it will see some of the first stars in the universe, billions of light years away,”Dr Pope stated.
“By taking a look at exoplanets as they transit, it will determine their climatic structure and spot water and other particles that might suggest worlds efficient in sustaining life.
“It changes the game on how we observe planets, stars, asteroids, and the universe around us.”
After more than a years of hold-ups, on December 24 the telescope will be introduced on a European Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana, bringing astronomers more detailed to remote galaxies than ever previously.
“One of the main benefits of a space telescope such as the JWST is that it overcomes one of the biggest problems facing astronomers — the atmosphere blocking their view of the wider universe,”Dr Pope stated.
“Such a powerful space telescope will put us on the doorstep of some incredible discoveries.”
Dr Pope will be associated with a number of observation jobs, consisting of the kernel stage task, observing remote and hard-to-see stars and worlds, and on an aperture masking task to study worlds at the minute they form around stars, and on approaches to observe asteroids and dwarf worlds with higher clearness than ever previously.
Engineers and researchers checked the whole telescope in an incredibly cold, low-pressure cryogenic vacuum chamber. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
“One project will use the JWST to study how brown dwarfs form, and since I’ve worked on a similar project for my Honours thesis using data from the HST, my role will be using the very same algorithm to analyze data from the JWST regarding these brown dwarfs,”Dr Pope stated.
“Another task will observe the most essential asteroids– the only issue is they’re too intense to observe, and images are rinsed.
“To deal with this, we’ve developed methods to make it easier to observe these ‘too-bright’ stars, that involves a high dynamic range image processing mode — like you’d use on your phone camera to bring out dark shadows and bright highlights.”
UQ Associate Professor Holger Baumgardt will utilize the JWST for a series of observation jobs focused on recognizing and studying great voids in remote galaxies.
“Specifically, we’ll be searching for supermassive black holes in the centers of nearby galaxies,”Dr Baumgardt stated.
“Our aim is to understand the relationship between the mass of both black holes and the galaxies that host them and learn how these supermassive black holes formed.”
Equipped with the significant abilities of the JWST,Dr Pope stated the future of astronomy looks intense, with responses to a few of astronomy’s crucial concerns within reach.
“JWST will give us a clearer picture of the origins of our own Solar System, and our best ever glimpses of the other weird and wonderful systems of planets in the Galaxy.”
