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The Future of Astronomy: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope
An anonymous reader writes: In 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched and deployed, becoming the first space-based observatory. In the years since, many others have followed, covering the entire electromagnetic spectrum, but with nothing superseding Hubble over the wavelengths it covers. That will all change with the James Webb Space Telescope, currently on schedule and almost ready for its October 2018 launch date. The science instruments are all complete, the final mirrors are being inserted into the optical assembly, the sunshield (a new, innovative component) is almost complete, and then it just needs assembly and launch. When it's all said and done, JWST will be orders of magnitude greater than all the other observatories that came before, and will finally allow us to truly see the first stars, galaxies and quasars in the Universe, not limited by the obscuring neutral gas that currently blocks our view with other observatories.
The Hubble Space Telescope was great looking outside the galaxy, but galactic dust blocks our view of our own galaxy. It will be great to finally be able to peer through the dust and see the structure of the Milky Way.
Don't click the link. It's forbes. it won't work uunless you disable adblock, and if you do it'll install malware.
(It's Ethan, the goatblower with the shaved head and the beard, if you hadn't guessed)
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why would you post a link to Forbes? It gives me some crap about disabling my ad-blocker (yeah, right) and not letting me see the content unless I do so. As far as I'm concerned it is the same as paywalled. Either find another source or don't post it. Oh, right, it's Timmy.
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Alright, for all you Pedants out there...
"Check that the mistake made with the Hubble wasn't made with this one"
Better?
Now get a Margarita or something.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
There's only one article I'm interested in: How much is StartsWithABang paying Dice to constantly post every one of his damn blogs? We've got 2 in one day now. Is this a subscription service, or do you pay by the submission? Does it cost extra to hide the poster as an Anonymous Coward? Is the cost proportional to the amount of hate they get?
Their calibration involved a reference point for one of the lasers that had to be precisely positioned. This was done by having a rigid metal bar with a polished end, covered by a very black cap with a pinhole in it. The point on the end of the bar visible through the pinhole was meant to be the reference.
Unfortunately someone scratched the end of the cap a little and no one noticed. The shiny metal in one of the scratches got picked up as the reference instead of the pinhole. As a result it was too close to the mirror by the thickness of the cap (a millimeter or so). That was enough to lead them to carefully polish the mirror to slightly the wrong shape.
They did, I believe, ignore contradictory results from another basically much less accurate method of testing the mirror, since the laser was giving consistent results and was the superior method.