The James Webb telescope successfully launched this morning, roughly 31.5 years after Hubble. In the following six months it will open up like a giant origami eye and begin to peer into the distant and early universe, trying to catch a glimpse of the birth of galaxies. It will drink infrared light like wine, light emitted by some of the very first stars—now long dead—so old it has stretched past the lower limits of the visible spectrum. There’s a clever comparison in there about a “new star in the sky” this Christmas Day, or, moving outside the Christian paradigm into the older and deeper imagery of light returning to the northern hemisphere, some additional poetic parallels, but it’s been days of prepping for the holiday, and I’m too exhausted to spin the words to do it. I can only hope that when those first images come in, they reveal wonders as awe-inspiring as Hubble did 25 years before.
The sun shield has successfully deployed on the first try! Mirrors should unfold by the end of the week. Pins and needles here.
I’m not sure why, but I can’t help but think of the “wine dark sea” every time I imagine the search for infrared remnants of long dead stars in the vastness of space.
The James Webb telescope successfully launched this morning, roughly 31.5 years after Hubble. In the following six months it will open up like a giant origami eye and begin to peer into the distant and early universe, trying to catch a glimpse of the birth of galaxies. It will drink infrared light like wine, light emitted by some of the very first stars—now long dead—so old it has stretched past the lower limits of the visible spectrum. There’s a clever comparison in there about a “new star in the sky” this Christmas Day, or, moving outside the Christian paradigm into the older and deeper imagery of light returning to the northern hemisphere, some additional poetic parallels, but it’s been days of prepping for the holiday, and I’m too exhausted to spin the words to do it. I can only hope that when those first images come in, they reveal wonders as awe-inspiring as Hubble did 25 years before.
