Look Up

It’s great to see the rain return but it sure does make stargazing difficult. So instead of doing some stargazing, we’re going to take a look at a virtual event taking place at 7 p.m. Wednesday. The Mountain View Library will be hosting NASA Talk: James Webb Space Telescope Launch. Registration is required in order to receive the Zoom link. The talk will be given by Thomas Greene, who is an astrophysicist in the Space Science and Astrobiology Division at NASA's Ames Research Center. He conducts observational studies of exoplanets and young stars and develops astronomical technologies and instrumentation. He is one of the investigators for a couple of key science instruments that are being built specifically for this telescope. A total of four instruments were built for the telescope. He also serves on the James Webb Space Telescope Users Committee.

If you haven’t heard yet, the James Webb Space Telescope is NASA’s largest and most powerful space science telescope that has ever been constructed. Its many unique technologies and the mission have been in development for 20 years. In August, testing was completed for the Dec. 18 launch. It arrived at the launch site, French Guiana, Oct. 12. It is so large that it will have to be folded for the launch and then unfolded after launch. Unfolding all the complex instruments and tools will take two weeks. It will travel 1 million miles to observe the sun and Earth lined up.