You are correct. It's picking up photons, or something, not signals. What James Webb sends to earth are signals. — Bitter Crank

Important distinction!

Are other galaxies more violent than ours? — The Opposite

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away...

the reason there’s no camera on board being that JW operates in pitch darkness (and at -440 degrees c) — Wayfarer

Can't some light be cast? With a lantern? Would be nice to see an actual image of the telescope. You could see what's going on. I think you mean -440 Fahrenheit.

Yes, it could be f. No, light cannot be cast, because it operates in the dark. Strangely analogous to the debates we've been having about the eye not seeing itself.

No, light cannot be cast, because it operates in the dark. — Wayfarer

It operates in the dark because no light is cast. Wouldn't it be handy, only to get the teĺescope started, to see what they are doing? So they can manually control the installation? Or can't you intervene when something goes wrong because of the time delay? I mean, if some widget is wrongly directed and flies into space, you will see it a few seconds later, and that could already be too late. How do they know the tennis court shield is in order? They can't see it.

Does feel like it sometimes. :death: :sweat:

Did you read the article I posted? It explains it pretty clearly. To try and add a camera to the rig would fundamentally change it. They operate it via telemetry, they don't need to literally see it to understand what it's doing. Those panel operators are all aces, they're highly trained engineers and techos. Like I said, it *is* rocket science.

I'm hoping for wonderful results from James Webb. At the same time, we have great examples of things that should have worked out well that just didn't. For instance, there is Millennium Towers in San Francisco, a 58 story up-market residential tower. It's now leaning 22 inches out of plumb, and the various fixes (mostly more piles next to and sort of under the building) haven't stopped the gradual tilting.

Bridges sometimes fall; big passenger planes crash--even if only once, it's a big deal; rockets occasionally miss the planet. Very sad engineers

So much the better if this very complicated piece of machinery unfolds itself, powers up, and does everything it is designed to do.

and Adding a camera to take selfies would provide one more thing to go haywire. You are right, Wayfarer: the designers/operators of this machine know it, through and through, better than they know the backs of their own hands (which are valued at considerably less than $10,000,000,000 apiece). Little sensors register when shaft #52 is fully extended, when wheel #8 has turned 2.88 times, when the temperature at location #22 is within the specified range, etc. tell them exactly what is happening.

Their sensors are more informative than the "engine" light on our old VW's dashboard which could mean anything from "the engine will explode in 10 seconds to a sensor is sending a meaningless warning, or maybe both. You can interpret it however you like."

:up:

It seems the problem is that a small camera disturbs the equipment, because maybe a wire emitting IR radiation can produce false images. Still... For the installation phase the newly invented sand grain sized cameras could have been sent along, or a small accompanying guiding satellite could have been send along shining light and registering the process. Would have provided the public with a contextual, though interesting construction story. You can generate a visual computer narrative, but the real thing would be great to see. Once the starting conditions are set, bye bye camera. Off you go.

Nancy Grace Roman will join James Webb in a few years.

Their sensors are more informative than the "engine" light on our old VW's dashboard which could mean anything from "the engine will explode in 10 seconds to a sensor is sending a meaningless warning, or maybe both. You can interpret it however you like." — Bitter Crank

Seeing that widgets are joint out of balance, when the telemetry system provides exact information would be handy. Building on basis of telemetry and computer aid seems a shaky base. If some widget is accidentally directed in the wrong direction, can the on-board robot correct?

JDEM, ,together with SNAP, AdEPT, INTEGRAL, ALGILE, and FERMI, powerful instruments to unravel the dark energy behavior of the early universe. Finally, the secret will be uncovered in the near future. A quest started when the Black Monolith suddenly appeared and made the monkeys use bones to bash in each others head or to throw to the Moon and investigate. Along with science morality was born.

Get on the design team and next time we'll do it your way,

Dunno if that's a good idea. "We"?

The original plan contained no cameras, as these were too big then. They stuck to the original plan, so no cameras on board. I'm sure for Roman they use cameras. A problem might be time delay. "A bolt on the loose...!" "Grab him!" "Oops, 10 seconds too late..."

I guess refrigeration technology isn't as advanced as we thought it was. We have to rely on naturally super-cold regions of space to do the cooling for us. I wonder how the JWST team tackled the brittleness of substances at extremely low temperatures?

I'm just struck by how the L₂ turned out to be the perfect spot for the JWST. I suppose what's obvious & reasonable to a wise person is an inexplicable coincidence to a fool.

I wonder how the JWST team tackled the brittleness of substances at extremely low temperatures? — Agent Smith

They put it in this huge chamber and cooled it! No kidding.

They put it in this huge chamber and cooled it! No kidding. — Wayfarer

Now that you mention it, I do recall reading about temperature tests done on the JWST. State of the art tech! It's a marvel of science and people who have no idea what goes into building such extreme machines will fail to appreciate the ingenuity and hard work involved.

:ok:

Did they actually practiced the telemetric operations at 40 K?

Phase 2 is proceeding without a hitch. So far so good. :nerd: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59873738 — 180 Proof

The mirror has unfolded successfully. Phase 3 begins. :clap:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jan/08/nasa-engineers-complete-the-unfolding-of-the-james-webb-space-telescope

It seems the problem is that a small camera disturbs the equipment, because maybe a wire emitting IR radiation can produce false images. — Raymond

Wouldn't you be disturbed with a small camera on you all the time?

Noticed that! Major milestone. Good write-up by Dennis Overbye in the NY Times, here https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/08/science/james-webb-telescope-nasa-deployment.html?smid=url-share

might be paywalled although you can usually browse one or two articles.

:up:

I'm still amazed that the delivery vehicle was able to descend into the Martian atmosphere, brake close to the surface, hold the position while it lowered the latest Mars Rover to the ground by cable, disconnect itself from the rover, and then crash landed at a safe distance. The rover didn't get tangled up in the cable, remarkably. The delivery vehicle didn't crash land on top of the rover.

An alternate method of landing is also impressive: the delivery vehicle descended towards the Martian surface, ejected the rover package which consisted of the rover surrounded by large balloons which inflated before the package reached the surface. The balloons bounced a few times before settling. Then they deflated and detached and somehow did not get tangled up in the Rover's wheels, camera, etc.

It would make an engineer ill if the whole mission was successful up to the point where the rover couldn't drive off because a balloon had jammed its wheels.

Same thing for James Webb: How nauseating it would be if everything worked perfectly up until the last preliminary step, and then the ignition switch was jammed (using "ignition switch" as a figure of speech here). I don't see how they stand the tension and the disappointment when things do fail, as they sometimes do.

Indeed, these are amazing feats of engineering/science.

I was hoping we could build a JWST for our mind too. Setting aside the fact that we haven't even built the equivalent of an ordinary, run-of-the-mill space probe for the "mindverse", a mind-JWST would be infinitely more awesome - peering into the distant past of our minds, it could shed the much needed light on the origins of consciousness/mind. That would be really clever, right?

right — Agent Smith

Right. Time machine?

I don't see how they stand the tension and the disappointment when things do fail, as they sometimes do. — Bitter Crank

I too wonder what it must be like for the people involved when a major mission fails. They take years to build, they have thousands of moving parts and extensive plans. Everyone is trained up for it and ready to work for some years into the future. Then - kaboom! Everything is over in an instant. Instead of all the happy-clappy folks dancing around and opening champagne, there’s silence, shaking heads, downward stares. What do they do then, after they all go home, and the post-mortems are finished. It would make an interesting screenplay. ‘When the bird fails’. It’s at those moments you’d want solid training in stoicism.

They should probably supply champaign by the truck load for disasters, when fast effective relief is really needed.

"Icarus Has Fallen" or "Icarus Falls" ...

Right. Time machine? — Bitter Crank

:chin: The JWST is a time machine - we're looking into the past of the cosmos, way back to the earliest galactic/stellar nurseries (the first light in the universe). Maybe we speak too soon, eh? Better not jinx the mission by counting our chickens before they hatch.