That is not what I said at all.
Whatever, dude.

f it is only something that cannot be demonstrated to others — Paine

Webb can only show pictures. Now that makes you understand! Webb can't look at the big bang. I can. Like all people with imagination.

Whatever, dude. — Paine

Yeah, whatever... Keep up your spirit of awe! Oooohh, pictures!

You equate the desire for more information with some more corrupt intention.

Webb can't look at the big bang — AgentTangarine

There wasn't much to 'see' in the Big Bang, because for the first 240,000 - 300,000 years, there was no light. Don't know about other radiation in the spectrum. Anyone?

Does God care whether the JW works or not?

There wasn't much to 'see' in the Big Bang, because for the first 240,000 - 300,000 years, there was no light. Don't know about other radiation in the spectrum. Anyone? — Bitter Crank

You could look at neutrinos. Offers you a glimpse how it was a fraction of a second after the bang. But I can already tell you that looks the same as the CMBR. I advocate for a new mission! Let's shoot a 1000000 billion cube water basin into orbit! To observe neutrino distribution away from the Sun. Must give a spectacular view. A NBR view on the 10exp-35 seconds ATB! Oeoeff!

Does God care whether the JW works or not? — Bitter Crank

God knows.

By means of galactic candles — AgentTangarine
What are those? — The Opposite

Well, like duh. They go on the galactic birthday cake. All, umm, 13 billion of them. Not sure who gets to blow out the candles tho. . . . .

Well, like duh. They go on the galactic birthday cake. All, umm, 13 billion of them. Not sure who gets to blow out the candles tho. . . . . — EricH

The intergalactic blow job...eeeehhh... galactic lightning struck fan. When the galactic black hole shitty hits it. Paaaarty time... Let's do the Webb....

depressing the amount of useless verbiage this thread is attracting.

For those actually interested in the project, the homepage is here https://jwst.nasa.gov/

Yes.

The ‘where is’ page is particularly cool

https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html

The JW will not orbit the earth; it will orbit the sun in the comfort and luxury provided by La Grange Point 2. Read all about it here. For an animation of the La Grange points, here.

Joseph-Louis Lagrange, baptized Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia, was either an Italian or a French mathematician, depending on the source. "In 1772, Lagrange published an "Essay on the three-body problem". In the first chapter he considered the general three-body problem. From that, in the second chapter, he demonstrated two special constant-pattern solutions, the collinear and the equilateral, for any three masses, with circular orbits." -- WIKIPEDIA.

La Grange rated a statue, which none of us have, so far.

When Nancy Grace Roman meets Webb, maybe it can be seen if we are alone or not! What if we could place telescopes in all 5 Lagrange points? Could ET look home?

The JWST's secondary mission is to look for habitable planets. I wonder how that works. Spectroscopic atmospheric signatures ($O_2$, $H_2O$) seem the easy route to take. I'm just curious if there are other markers of life the JWST is designed to pick up from only the EM spectrum?

:smirk:

@Wayfarer :up:

It's a great project. Can't wait to learn from it.

^{(I'd ignore the weird comments)}

Mostly have been. There's not much to report on at this stage, other than that it seems to be proceeding smoothly so far, but following it with interest.

I'm very excited

It's a great project. Can't wait to learn from it.

(I'd ignore the weird comments) — jorndoe

Could you teach me how to change the font size/color? Thanks.

_{This line has a tag 'sub'.}

'Sub' means 'subscript' and produces smaller text output.
'Sup' means superscript, can be used for footnotes if required ^{like this}, also useful for formulae, i.e. e=mc².

There's no way to change font color to my knowledge (BBcode has a tag 'color=blue' etc but it doesn't seem to be implemented in this forum software. Overall the formatting is basic but functional.)

LARGE₂

Note¹

Got it! Thanks @Wayfarer

Why the heck is the Lagrange point 2 (L₂) the perfect spot for the JWST? Is it because of technical reasons or astronomical ones? Coincidence? :chin:

I think it has to do with maintaining a stable orbit and an invariant orientation with one side always towards the sun. It's a point where's it's gravitationally balanced in orbit so remains stable. That's what I got from the introductory video.

Our friend stays shielded from bright sunlight. In the shadow of the Earth.

I only has an invariant position wrt Earth. It rotates around the Sun. The Sun moves in the galaxy, the galaxy moves wrt other galaxies. The galaxy cluster moves wrt other clusters. So a lot of motion. Still not enough to cause difficulty to keep Webb directed.

I only has an invariant position wrt Earth. — Raymond

What I meant.

:up:

But why should that be important? Because of communication? Why should a telescope stay fixed wrt to Earth?

You tell us.