James Webb Space Telescope Presentation

Our big-brained Scoutmaster Alan gave a presentation about the James Webb Space Telescope at the public library today, and it was mind-blowing! Alan is a member of the Yellowstone Valley Astronomy Association. Some fun facts we learned:

• The distance of celestial bodies is determined based on their color according to a redshift or blueshift in the light they emit, red being farther and blue being closer.

• Galaxies almost all show a redshift (stretched light) because the universe is expanding away from us.

• The JWST is located at Lagrange Point 2, which is about 1 million miles from Earth and about 38,000 miles from the moon.

• The JWST is worth $10 billion U.S. dollars, and was paid for by the public, which means anyone can use it! (If you have a good reason to.)

• Imagine a grain of sand on your fingertip and hold it out in front of you after dark. The space that grain of sand occupies in your field of view contains thousands of galaxies. When you zoom in on JWST's incredible images, you can see many of them. Then try to imagine how many galaxies exist in the whole night sky! You can't!

  
  

A typical camera has one shutter. The JWST has many microshutters. These can be used to zero in on a specific area (or several) by blocking the light of other celestial bodies. This allows the telescope to capture an image with a ton of useful information based on the type of spectral light each body emits.

The Hexagonal mirrors that create the telescope's optical elements are made of gold-plated beryllium:

Here is a comparison of Hubble and James Webb's capture of the Pillars of Creation (a nursery of baby stars within the Eagle Nebula).

Links Alan shared in his presentation:

• Webb Sky

• Webb Images

• Currently Observing

• Yellowstone Valley Astronomy Association