Tag: Astronomy
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Telescope’s launch makes Christmas merry for space fans, but the ride has just begun
An Ariane 5 rocket lifts off with the James Webb Space Telescope. (ESA / CNES / Arianespace / JM Guillon) The most expensive telescope in the known universe has begun its journey to a vantage point a million miles from Earth with its launch from French Guiana. Today’s liftoff of an Ariane 5 rocket from…
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NASA, ESA, CSA successfully launch the historic James Webb Space Telescope
It is a mission more than 25 years in the making. The revolutionary JWST (James Webb Space Telescope)—a partnership between NASA, the ESA (European Space Agency), and the CSA (Canadian Space Agency)— has launched atop its Ariane 5 rocket from launchpad ELA-3 at the Guiana Space Centre in South America. Liftoff of James Webb occurred…
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High cost, high risk, high hopes: There’s a lot riding on the $10B James Webb Space Telescope’s launch
An Ariane 5 rocket is set to launch NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. (NASA Photo / Bill Ingalls) The launch of NASA’s $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope from French Guiana could mark a triumph in a tale that thousands of astronomers have been following for a generation. Or it could result in the deepest…
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Seeing the universe in the Mid-Infrared with James Webb’s MIRI instrument
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), presently tracking toward a launch no earlier than December 22 on an Ariane 5 rocket from the Guiana Space Centre in South America, will revolutionize in-space astronomy, particularly with its Mid-InfraRed Instrument, or MIRI. The instrument itself requires special cooling to drop its temperature to just 6 Kelvin —…
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Unfolding the universe: the commissioning process of the James Webb Space Telescope
This December, an Ariane 5 rocket will launch from Kourou, French Guiana carrying the most complicated telescope ever developed — the joint NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. However, when the telescope launches, it will not immediately be ready for scientific observations. In fact, the telescope won’t perform any observations until about six months after launch.…
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VY Canis Majoris mass-loss history sheds light on hypergiant’s state, connection to Betelgeuse
In the southern hemisphere, in the constellation Canis Major, lies a very young, very massive red hypergiant star called VY Canis Majoris (VY CMa). A pulsating variable, its apparent magnitude (how bright it appears in the night sky) varies unpredictably. It is located 1.2 kiloparsecs, or approximately 3,900 light years, from Earth, is only 8.2…
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NASA blames recent Hubble woes on aging hardware
The Hubble Space Telescope, seen from the space shuttle Columbia at the end of a 2002 servicing mission. The observatory’s door is open in this picture. Credit: NASA Hardware problems that cropped up earlier this month on the Hubble Space Telescope, now approaching the 31st anniversary of its launch, are the latest signs the observatory…
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Hubble resumes science observations after software error
The Hubble Space Telescope in the payload bay of space shuttle Atlantis during the last servicing mission in May 2009. Credit: NASA NASA has partially restored the Hubble Space Telescope to science mode after a software error temporarily halted observations, but engineers continue studying a problem that kept the telescope’s aperture door from closing and…
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From supernova to something much more intriguing at the core of galaxy 253-3
On 14 November 2014, a bright flash flagged the All Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae, or ASAS-SN — a global network of 20 telescopes managed at Ohio State University in the U.S. The flash originated in galaxy ESO 253-3, located 570 million light-years away. The sudden burst of energy was examined by astronomers and categorized…
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James Webb, OneWeb highlight Arianespace’s 2021 launch schedule
File photo of an Ariane 5 launch in January 2020. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – JM Guillon The planned Halloween launch of the James Webb Space Telescope — one of eight Ariane 5 launches left before the rocket’s retirement — and a series of flights to build out OneWeb’s satellite internet…