What’s on the James Webb Space Telescope’s to-do list?

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is about to reach its new home.

The most advanced space observatory ever built, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), will reach Second Lagrange point of Earth (L2) at 2:00 PM EST Monday, January 24, 2022. It’s a special place in space a million miles behind the Earth from where he can keep the Sun, Earth and Moon behind him as he watches deep into the cosmos like never before.

So what?

Webb is not expected to begin science operations until late this year, likely around May or June 2022, when the 18 gold-coated beryllium segments of his signature 21.5-foot/6.5-meter mirror have been aligned and its calibrated optical system.

Specializing in detecting the oldest light in the Universe – the infrared part of the spectrum – we know Webb will photograph early galaxies, explore the mysteries of the Universe’s origins and directly image exoplanets, but really on his official to-do list?

From a long list of over 1,100 projects from 44 countries, here are some of the most intriguing projects that have ever received time (8,760 hours in total) on Round 1, Webb’s first year of planned observations.

Search “cosmic dawn”

The first and biggest project of Webb’s freshman year will be COSMOS-Webb, a program to map the first galaxies in the universe – the so-called “cosmic dawn”.

This is likely to produce data used by scientists for decades. Its NIRCam instrument will point to the same reference area of ​​the night sky as previously imaged by Hubble, but this time is expected to reveal half a million as yet unknown near-infrared galaxies as well as 32,000 mid-infrared galaxies. infrared.

“Because we cover such a large area, we can observe large-scale structures at the dawn of galaxy formation,” said Caitlin Casey, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin and co-lead of COSMOS. -Webb. program. “We will also search for some of the rarest galaxies that existed early, as well as map the large-scale distribution of dark matter in galaxies up to very ancient times.”

COSMOS-Webb is part of the Webb Treasury program, which are datasets considered so important that they will be made public in perpetuity.

See if the TRAPPIST-1 system contains an Earth 2.0

Webb will soon make the first detailed near-infrared study of the atmosphere of a planet in the habitable zone.

About 41 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Aquarius, TRAPPIST-1 is a small red dwarf star with seven Earth-sized planets around it – the most we know of yet. Three exoplanets were discovered around TRAPPIST-1 in 2016 by the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile and later by NASA’s now retired Spitzer Space Telescope.

Now it’s Webb’s turn to tell us something we don’t know about these potentially Earth-like planets — specifically TRAPPIST-1c, which is said to be rocky and Venus-like.

During Webb’s first year, he would produce data for Hot Take on a Cool World: Does Trappist-1c have an atmosphere? and Probing the terrestrial planet TRAPPIST-1c for the presence of an atmosphere.

Another project, Atmospheric reconnaissance of planets TRAPPIST-1, will confirm whether the planets have atmospheres.

Unravel the mysteries of star formation

How are stars and star clusters formed? You might think astronomers should know by now, but much of the universe is obscured by gas and dust.

Cue Webb, who will be able to see through it all thanks to his infrared sensitivity. So in another of the Webb Treasure studies, an international research team will study the stars, star clusters, and dust found in 19 nearby galaxies.

It’s called the PHANGS survey (Physics at High Angular resolution in Near Near GalaxieS) and it brings together more than 100 international experts to study star formation from start to finish.

“Webb will reveal star formation in its very early stages, just as gas is collapsing to form stars and heating up the surrounding dust,” said Gemini Observatory chief scientist Janice Lee at NOIRLab. the National Science Foundation in Tucson, Arizona.

It should create groundbreaking data and stimulate major scientific advances, according to to scientists.

Reveal the moons of Uranus

Except for a brief flyby in 1986 by NASA’s Voyager 2 probe, the seventh planet from the Sun is virtually unexplored, and its 27 moons even less.

It’s there that The Moons of Uranus: A NIRSpec Investigation of Their Origins, Organic Constituents, and Possible Activity in the Ocean World is coming, a project that will use 21 hours of Webb’s time to study Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon.

These four largest moons will be examined for traces of ammonia, organic molecules, carbon dioxide ice and water to see if, as some theorize, they host subterranean oceans.

It is hoped that the dataset can be used to help plan future spacecraft missions to explore Uranus and its moons, like this exciting new lighthouse mission currently being discussed by NASA.

Weigh a supermassive black hole

Astronomers have discovered a supermassive hole weighing about 40 million times more than our Sun in a nearby spiral galaxy called NGC 4151.

In an effort to determine exactly how a supermassive hole (which is present in all galaxies) “feeds” and affects the surrounding galaxy, a team led by the University of Memphis wants to use Webb to determine its mass.

In AGN Power and Feedback in NGC 4151 Webb will be used to measure the motions of stars in the galaxy’s core, as the faster nearby stars move, the heavier the black hole will have to be as its gravitational influence is increased.

How Webb will make his discoveries

To understand why Webb is unique and how he will make his discoveries, it helps to know exactly what scientific instruments are on board:

MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument): A camera and spectrograph that sees light in the mid-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Mainly for better than Hubble wide field astrophotography images.

NIR Cam (Near Infrared Camera): to detect the light of the first stars and galaxies. It has a coronagraph that can block light from a star, which helps in finding planets orbiting nearby stars.

NIRISS (Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph): for the detection of the “first light” of the first stars, and for the detection of exoplanets when they cross their star.

NIR spec (Near InfraRed Spectrograph): a spectrometer to disperse light from an object into a spectrum. This instrument can observe 100 objects simultaneously.