In anticipation of its launch in 2014, and perhaps in response to the Hubble3-D IMAX movie, the James Webb Space Telescope folks have put together this impressive preview of things to come. If you really want to pump it up, watch in in HD (mouse-over the little box on the bottom right that says 360.)
More information about the Webb Telescope
You can also Subscribe to NASA on iTunes for more videos like this.
Nice ad, but ‘giant leap forward’? Not unless this telescope is going to figure out what the deal is with dark matter or dark energy.
This ad aims about as high as your average pickup truck commercial.
YEAH. BIG. TOUGH. REALLY. YEAH.
Popular science does not necessarily mean dumbed-down narratives.
Well, others could as well remark that knowing DM & DE closer isn’t going to leap us forward, since it is basic to standard cosmology. While Webb will fill in the details, or Planck will likely continue falsify among inflationary theories which goes beyond standard cosmology.
[Now I’m quite confident that at least knowing DM will improve on the Standard Model, which would be a leap. Just not in cosmology.]
There are a few trepidations I have with WST. The first is that this is situated at L2, which means if something goes wrong it is not servicable. Without the Constellation (or related) program it can’t be serviced. The other is that the primary mirror is not shielded. A good micrometeoroid impact and the BRDF of the mirror goes ca-ca.
Barring those two problems we should get some good data on optical-IR astronomy. We should be able to get close in views of the earliest galaxy formations.
LC
i really laughed when I saw the vid.
Let see the telescope specifications were boldly taken from Babylon 5 TV Series from the episode “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars” (last episode in Season 4) Here the words “Please Stand By”, etc are almost the exact voice! It is also related by the words that echo NASA. I.e. “Dedicated to all the People Who Predicted that the Babylon Project Would Fail in its Mission. Faith Manages.” (someone must have been a fan.)
The font and the graphics are all from Battlestar Galactica too!
Also the date for the Primary Mirror taken at random is given as 18th April 2044 (the latest date is in 2048) – so they are really hoping it will last that long (optimistic I’d reckon). However, the Julian Date on the page does not match the this written date, which should be 26th April 2208! (Someone mucking around with our minds!) Hope the get it right when they start using it!
(He He!)