Two weeks in, the Webb Space Telescope is reshaping astronomy

[seanhunter]

I couldn't believe that first image. You could clearly see the gravitational lensing causing the light to form arcs. Even for someone who knows nothing about astronomy it was super exciting.

[ycombinete]

Apparently some of those discs were the same galaxy see in multiple places due to the power of the lensing?

[whekdhek]

It's a nice image, but it's not the first time we've seen something like that pretty clearly. https://news.uchicago.edu/story/gravitational-lens-reveals-d...

[867-5309]

I wonder if it's additive/accumulative i.e. every star in the galaxy lends itself to the effect, or if it comes mainly from the SMBH at the centre of the galaxy, or a combination of both?

[TedShiller]

I'm not sure that assessment is accurate

[mupuff1234]

Isn't it worth it to launch another one? Wouldn't the cost be minimal given that zero R&D is required?

[digdugdirk]

An absolute ton of the cost of this was down to the extremely precise manufacturing required to make it. Some of that would be reduced now that they've made it once, but we're still talking about one-off components here. It won't be an order of magnitude.

One thing I am curious about is how many spare parts were produced - in small scale high precision manufacturing like this there's often multiples of components produced, with only the highest spec components shipped out. What could we cobble together with the rejects and leftovers? And what would that give us, results wise?

[zaarn]

Barely worth to launch another one. It would be more cost effective to invest some R&D into building a telescope with a different target wavelength to get more science than if you had two of the same telescope. The engineers will also absolutely want to fix any issues they found in Webb already.

[divbzero]

There aren’t plans to launch an identical telescope. Perhaps the costs of manufacturing and testing are high enough that we might as well launch a different telescope with different capabilities?

The Roman Space Telescope is a wide field instrument that is now under development and slated to launch in 2026 [1]. The Astro2020 decadal survey from the National Academies also recommended “a large (~6m diameter) Infrared/Optical/Ultraviolet space telescope” to observe exoplanets [2].

[1]: https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-falcon-heavy-to-launch-ro...

[2]: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/26141/interactive...

[_joel]

I'd be keener to see some of the larger diameter rockets coming online soon be used as a housing. 9m to play with there and perhaps with NASA's amazing origami skills then that could really open the door to some huge space telescopes.

[TIPSIO]

It would be so cool to have a Google Earth / zoom-like experience of everywhere you can see, like this:

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-...

[bmitc]

There's no way the cost would be minimal. I would even wager that it would be just as or more expensive to build a duplicate than to build a new design based upon what was learned. Given the decades over which the James Webb Telescope was developed, it has parts and designs in it that are, well, decades old.

And the bill of materials is unlikely to have been the primary cost factor. Extensive research, development, and testing was performed.

[somat]

I think the ship has sailed on that one, the time to make(and test) a second one would have been at the same time the first was being manufactured.

[dhosek]

Why build just one when for twice the price you could have two?

[peter303]

LUVOIR is a foldable mirror telescope, larger than JWST, UV to near IR, like Hubble. Congress has a bad test in mouth from JWST delays and overruns. Pehaps dozens of majornew discoveries will help.

Roman is next in queue with many of its parts already built and operational around 2028.

[ajuc]

Wait for starship, make a new bigger one that doesn't have to fold like crazy fragile origami, manufacture and send 10 of them for the price of making and sending this one.

[causi]

Launching another one wouldn't let Bell and Northrop extract a 2,000% budget overrun so it's not gonna happen.

[BurningFrog]

Scientifically: probably

Politically: no

[caycep]

that being said, I feel like there's going to be a ton of datasets to be mined for some time. When I was a summer intern in ~2000, they were still writing papers out of Viking data from the '70s

[sparker72678]

No doubt. Because all the instruments are active when observing, teams will end up with tons of data unrelated/unused in their own research. A treasure trove for future researchers for sure.

[pradn]

What were those papers about?

[sebmellen]

Two weeks of service, made possible by 26 years of development. Not unlike the 10-years-to-overnight-success pattern.

[z9znz]

This is another good example of how consistency, determination, and effort can really make big things happen. (It's also an example of why we should force ourselves to put some of our energy into long term efforts, the results of which we may never personally experience.)

[joering2]

Classical "one person, overnight entrepreneurship success" that took 10 years of making and a team of skilled employees.

[ericmcer]

According to this article it was Joe Bidens doing lol.

[echelon]

> Two weeks of service, made possible by 26 years of development.

With already unanticipated levels of micrometeorite collision and mirror damage [1], I'm worried we may not see a full service life out of JWST.

All of the "look what the JWST has accomplished in two weeks" press seems like drumming up accolades in advance of an early retirement.

I hope I'm wrong.

[1] https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-micrometeor...

[meltyness]

In physics better fidelity always gives better answers, and that's exactly what this is. It's launching into an environment post-film, post-ubiquitous networking, and post-statML. In addition to a much greater deal of fidelity from the on-board hardware, humanity has attained a much greater deal of fidelity of explanation.

>>> “We worked nonstop,” said Pascale. “It was like an escape room.”

Astronomers (not necessarily cosmologists, or physicists) it seems are finding many reasons to be very busy with the streams of data coming from this device.

[Rastonbury]

Anyone know how much of a difference are due to post processing of images when comparing webb and hubble? For example in the image of NGC7496 galaxy, Webb has more resolution right, but did they make the colours more intense/shifted, or are these pictures a sort of representative of what we could see with our eyes

https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2022/07/NGC749...

[O__________O]

Are the plans for the future use of the telescope public?

[Cerium]

Yes, you can see the observing schedule and a list of approved programs:

https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/observing-sched...

https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-progra...

[ge96]

Just imagine leaving the Earth system and nothing you ever cared about matters anymore. Only thing is being alive.

[sxcurry]

"(Only as those stars exploded did they forge heavier elements such as oxygen and spew them into the cosmos.)" I don't think this is correct - can't elements up to Iron be created through fusion in the stellar core?

[frebord]

Imagine the increase in existential crises the past 2 weeks.

[nickstinemates]

How do we know, uh, which direction to send it in?

[bryananderson]

Anyone can apply for time to point JWST somewhere by making a research proposal to the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). STScI weighs the proposals and picks the ones that it judges to be most compelling. This is the same system that is used for Hubble. You’d be competing with the world’s top research teams, and there isn’t remotely enough time for JWST to execute all of the proposals, so in practice your chances are low as a layperson—but anyone can at least submit a proposal.

[ryukoposting]

We know where the sun is, and we know to send it somewhere else.

[praveen9920]

I am most excited about any research on dark matter that comes out of Webb’s data. That is one big puzzle to this day

[z9znz]

I like to imagine the possibilities if we stopped spending money on military and instead spent it on research and science. [edit - perhaps this is misunderstood as me suggesting money spent on the telecope is wasted; quite the contrary, I'm arguing that we should be spending MORE on efforts like this!]

Granted, there are some breakthroughs that come from military research, being generous that would still amount to a small fraction of what we could be discovering and improving if the goals were different.

And honestly, we should be spending $$$$ on food development research. We're going to need to know how to grow food in new ways soon, as the old ways have reached their limits. Food seems kind of important...

[sega_sai]

Astronomer here. This is clearly an overhyped title. Sure JWST is great and a lot will hopefully come from it, but we don't need to overhype it. So far we learned from JWST that it is performing well, but no ground breaking results (but for sure they will come). (Tbh I stopped reading quanta because every time there is a news "X solved problem nobody thought could be solved" and titles like that.)

[beanjuice]

The title is a bit inaccurate to the article content. Has some new finding truly un-done past findings in astronomy? How has it been reshaped? I'm as excited as anyone about what JW can provide, but it is just a new era in addition, not exception- as even the article puts it.