HAPPY JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE'S LAUNCH EVE!

The James Webb Space Telescope talks to @sciencemug and Bernard

[The JWST pic by NASA, is a public domain image (source: Wikimedia Commons); the starry background free pic, by Francesco Ungaro, is  under Pexels license (source: Pexels); pics adapted by @sciencemug]

 

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launch is near!

- 25/Dec/2021 - 12:20 UTC (GMT) -

Go buddy, we all root for you! 

 

25-Dec-2021 update: the launch was a success! Now fingers crossed for the next 29 days, and then for the following (at least) five months, of commisioning...

Thanks to NASA, ESA, CSA and Arianespace, i.e. to the thousands people who worked, work and will be working on this mind-boggling, astonishing, amazing, wildly wonderful (and so on and on) project!

 

PS
Just to put things in prospective, buddy, think of this.
The James Webb Space Telescope project involved thousands of people from three space agencies, "over 300 universities, organizations, and companies from 29 U.S. states and 14 countries" (see).
JWST cost about 8.8 billion euros/10 billion dollars over 24 years. This means that, to make something that is going to let humanity see the unseen and therefore most probably change the way it sees the Universe (with all the repercussions such changes have), well, humanity spent, per year, roughly the same amount of money spent to shoot "Avengers: Endgame", and, in total, ~1billion bucks less than two nuclear submarines, or, if you prefer, the 0.01% of 2020 World's Gross Domestic Product-GDP...
 

Ah, Science! 

 

Merry Christmas, folks!

FAREWELL, ARECIBO TELESCOPE! (Nov 1963 - Dec 2020)

Completed in November 1963, the giant (its dish is/was 305 meters wide) Arecibo radio telescope of the Arecibo Observatory (near Arecibo, in Puerto Rico) suffered apparently irreparable damage on the early morning of December 1st, 2020. 

On that day, indeed, the telescope’s instrument platform (a 900 tonnes juggernaut, like about a hundred fully loaded 5th Wheel Camper), suspended above the already previously partially damaged dish, crashed into it definitely completing the destruction job.

Here a full account and footage of what happened.

The following cartoon is this dumb blog's homage to this invaluable piece of technology and source of scientific discoveries and, ultimately, of human progress.

 

Farewell, Arecibo Radio Telescope! (by @sciencemug)

[The Arecibo Telescope pic by Jaro Nemčok, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (source: Wikimedia Commons); the pic is adapted by @sciencemug]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GALILEO!

Happy b-day Galileo! (by sciencemug)

Galileo Galilei (born: 15-2-1564), physicist, Italian, genius.

PS: the tool is the telescope