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James Webb Space Telescope

Viewing Posts from August 2023

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    Mid-Infrared Instrument Operations Update

    In this illustration, the multilayered sunshield on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope stretches out beneath the observatory’s honeycomb mirror

    On Apr. 21, 2023, the James Webb Space Telescope team shared that one of the MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) observing modes, called Medium-Resolution Spectroscopy (MRS), showed a reduction in the amount of light registered by MIRI's detectors. Initial analysis of MIRI's imaging mode did not show a similar effect. However, as part of the team's investigation …

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    Webb Reveals Intricate Details in the Remains of a Dying Star

    This image of the Ring Nebula appears as a distorted doughnut. The nebula's inner cavity hosts shades of blue and green, while the detailed ring transitions through shades of orange in the inner regions and pink in the outer region. The ring's inner region has distinct filament elements.

    Editor's Note: This post highlights data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope obtained images of the Ring Nebula, one of the best-known examples of a planetary nebula. Much like the Southern Ring Nebula, one of Webb's first images, the Ring Nebula displays intricate …

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    Talking with Webb using the Deep Space Network

    This is the 34 meter antenna at Goldstone, California. The dish is enormous, taking up the bottom right half of the image. The dish, which is white with lines running through it is turned up to the sky. It has a white base that attaches it to the ground, and a smaller building to its left, partially blocked by shrubs and bush. Behind it are low mountains and a mostly clear sky, with faint layers of clouds off in the distance behind the mountains.

    NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is nearly 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometer) away from Earth, orbiting around the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2. How do we send commands and receive telemetry – the science and engineering data from the observatory – from that far away? We use the DSN (Deep Space Network) to communicate with …

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