Source/Credit: Artist’s image of WASP-121b from Engine House VFX.
It was not so long ago that we were questioning the very existence of exoplanets, and now we are measuring their dark-sides. MIT News has a story about a recent paper discussing the findings of astronomers observing an exoplanet approximately 850 light years from Earth. About twice the size of Jupiter and tidally-locked with its host star, the exoplanet has a very strange water cycle. The article states:
While on Earth, water cycles by first evaporating, then condensing into clouds, then raining out, on WASP-121b, the water cycle is far more intense: On the day side, the atoms that make up water are ripped apart at temperatures over 3,000 kelvins. These atoms are blown around to the night side, where colder temperatures allow hydrogen and oxygen atoms to recombine into water molecules, which then blow back to the day side, where the cycle starts again.
The article and paper go into many more details, yet I am most impressed with this level of observation already possible using a spectroscopic camera aboard NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. With the James Webb Space Telescope soon to go online, we can only hope for more fascinating insights into distant exoplanets.
NASA has shared the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which includes the selfie of the 18-part mirror shown above. The space telescope is still aligning these mirror segments before prime time, so we will probably see more selfies and related shots for the time being, such as the images below (one labeled) showing the 18 segment views of one star that will eventually become one view of one star.
Keep these raw images in mind once we start to see mind-blowing images from the JWST. This amazing device is just getting started. The first of these images should start to appear this summer.
Now that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is settling in at its new location 1 million miles away, we will be hearing that name for at least a decade every time NASA has new findings related to distant planets. It is worth noting that some people are not so pleased with the spacecraft’s designated name.
A recent article in Scientific American magazine highlighted some resistance to allowing former NASA administrator James Webb’s name to be part of the new space telescope. In the article, “NASA Won’t Rename the James Webb Space Telescope—and Astronomers Are Angry,” we are told that more than 1,200 individuals, “including scientists,” signed a petition asking for a new name. The petition stated that Mr. Webb was in key government positions during a period when gay and lesbian federal employees were fired due to their sexual orientation. NASA later reported it did not have any evidence to support such a name change and considered the matter closed.
I will admit that I liked the name Hubble for the space telescope being replaced by the JWST. It seemed appropriate to name the telescope after Edwin Hubble, who proved there were galaxies beyond our Milky Way. That is an impressive accomplishment, whereas Mr. Webb was a successful Washington bureaucrat. Maybe another scientist would have been more appropriate.
That said, getting space programs funded is no easy task, so even if they want to name a space telescope after a U.S. Senator I will not issue an objection if that senator can get the job done. And let’s remember that we do have many perfect people for naming rights. Even Edwin Hubble, for all of his great accomplishments, was under a cloud of suspicion regarding a questionable redaction of part of a translation of George’s Lemaître’s 1927 paper that first reported what is today know as Hubble’s Law. While Hubble was eventually cleared of any questionable deeds, had it been raised at the time NASA was naming the space telescope it could have become an issue.
You may recall that NASA has used other questionable names for its missions in the past. For example, the god Apollo has many misadventures involving innocent women. Just ask Cassandra. And Mercury was far from innocent. The pesky god was known for rape and even Pandora’s Box. For some reason, I do not believe any of the gods would pass the test today.
Source: “Pandora” by Charles Edward Perugini, 1839-1918.
If you are looking for a new podcast, or just want to listen to an interesting conversation, I recommend BBC’s recent Inside Science episode about human travel to the Moon and Mars. Titled “A New Space Age?,” the December 30, 2021 episode discusses NASA’s Artemis lunar program, the timetable for travel to Mars, and whether or not we even need to send humans into space.
Dr. Kevin Fong leads a panel of experts to discuss these topics:
— Dr. Mike Barratt, a senior NASA astronaut and medical doctor based at the Johnson Space Center;
— Dr. Anita Sengupta, Research Associate Professor in Engineering at the University of Southern California; and
— Oliver Morton, Briefings editor at the Economist and author of several books on the Moon and Mars.
If you enjoy the conversation, you may want to look around a few of the other episodes as well, such as the December 16, 2021 episode on the James Webb Space Telescope.
Now that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWSP) has deployed its 21-foot, gold-coated primary mirror, it is in good shape as it heads for the Sun-Earth’s second Lagrange point, known as L2, which is nearly 1 million miles from Earth. However, it will not be the first spacecraft to park in this spot to conduct a scientific mission.
I looked around to get a good inventory of what was operating, and will be operating, at L2 when JWST arrives and found the best listing on Wikipedia. Here is the inventory:
From 2003 to 2004: NASA’s WIND studied radio waves and plasma that occur in the solar wind and in the Earth’s magnetosphere (now in L1).
From 2009 to 2013: The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Herschel Space Observatory sifted through star-forming clouds to trace the path by which potentially life-forming molecules, such as water, form.
From 2009 to 2013: The ESA’s Planck spacecraft observatory mapped the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background at microwave and infrared frequencies, with high sensitivity and small angular resolution.
From 2011 to 2012: Chinese National Space Programs’s Chang’e 2 tested the Chinese tracking and control network (after first serving as a lunar probe).
Current missions at L2:
Since 2014: The ESA Gaia probe has been measuring the positions, distances and motions of stars, with a mission to construct a 3D space catalog containing approximately 1 billion astronomical objects (stars, planets, comets, asteroids, quasars, and more).
Since 2019: The joint Russian-German high-energy astrophysics observatory Spektr-RG has been conducting a seven-year X-ray survey, the first in the medium X-ray band less than 10 keV energies, and the first to map an estimated 100,000 galaxy clusters.
Of course, there are future missions planned for L2, and plenty of craft operating in L1, L4, and L5. That will be a story or two for another time.
Our Awesome Universe 