The Astronomy and Physics thread. And things of the like.

[PVarck31]

JWST successfully tensioned it's sun shield Tuesday.

Basically gigantic tin foil thick shield had to be stretched to the size of a tennis court and have perfect tension to where it's as close to ripping as possible.

Many see this as the most critical point of the mission. So this was huge.

[PVarck31]

Secondary mirror deployed successfully.

Port side primary mirror unfolded successfully.

Starboard side tomorrow. If that goes well, they just need to adjust the 18 mirror segments to tune the picture and it will be fully operational. Amazing feat of engineering.

Almost there.

Mirror fully deployed!!!!

[Master Live 013]

[PVarck31]

This was one of the most complicated things in engineering we have ever attempted. Over 400 pieces of equipment needed to work perfectly for this to not be a 10 Billion dollar piece of space junk.

And what's even better, the launch went so well that they didn't need to make as many course corrections as they thought, so the telescope can now be functional way past it's original 5 year window. Some saying now it could work for nearly 20 years. The things we are about to discover will no doubt change what we know about the universe.

[PVarck31]

At about 2PM tomorrow, the JWST will enter L2 and start it's orbit around the sun.

Should see the first pictures from it in June. So excited.

[PVarck31]

The first light. Over 13 billion years ago. - JWST

[Bard]

That's amazing. Truly breathtaking looking at that and seeing all the galaxies.

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[Kodii Rockets]

Quote: Originally Posted by PVarck31

The first light. Over 13 billion years ago. - JWST

Some additional fun facts...

-Everything seen in this image is between 4.6-13 billion light years away (a light year is approximately 32,700 human years), so we're looking back that far in time.
-The ones with the points are stars 'other suns' within our galaxy, no guess as to how many planets orbit them.
-Everything else in the picture is other galaxies
- In relation to the vast expanse of space, this image is the equivalent of looking at a speck of sand on your fingertip. Tiny little snapshot.

Absolutely mind blowing stuff.