Latest / Made of Stars / The Comeback Story of the Last 18 Months

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The Comeback Story of the Last 18 Months · Made of Stars

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Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics, and
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space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been known to learn about astronomical
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phenomenon, the scientific method, and expand the vocabulary to include terms like quasar,
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asterism and uranus. Listen, that's your own risk, Go ahead.
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Where made of Stars, Made of Stars? Stars? You could be from
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High Hollywood, New Mexico, Mars Where Stars? When we are made of
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Stars? Joined by my good friend doctor Sean Cruizen from Columbis State Universities,
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Cocacol of Space Science Center. I'm Wes Carol, Morning Sean, Good morning
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West, gonna be with you today. It's kind of a fun a little
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bit of a fun, different kind of episode we're gonna do today. So
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that's right, we're on the other side of Independence Day, some folks on
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vacation, some folks traveling. We thought this might be a nice educational show.
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I mean, we try to be educational anyway, but in some ways
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just being a little informative about something that we talk about a lot on this
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show. So if folks are traveling or are on vacation and they need something
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to listen to in the car. I've had a number of people tell me
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they like to listen to the show while they're driving. Thanks for that.
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Please drive more, is all we could say to those of you that listen
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while driving. We need all the driving listening we can get now. But
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we talk a lot about there's a few topics that seem to kind of bubble
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up from time to time over the course of us doing this show every week.
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One of those regular topics is the James Webb Space Telescope, And this
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is something that we have been talking about for years because obviously this is a
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project that took a very long time to get off the ground, so to
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speak. And then just before it got off the ground, they dropped it
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and it fell on the ground. So there's that too, and we joke
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about that, and we can kind of talk about that because we do reference
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that from time to time, because it's kind of fun to go through the
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history of this telescope. But maybe the most interesting part about this phase the
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thing has been working since, you know, up in the air and doing
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its job for about eighteen months now, about a year and a half,
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and it's already worked its way through all of the goals for the five years
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that they had planned for it, so that in itself is pretty remarkable.
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But we just thought we'd spend this episode just talking about the James web Space
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Telescope, how it got started, what its purpose was, and we'll at
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the end we'll talk about some of the incredible images that it's already captured.
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We know there are a few listeners to our podcast who are longtime listeners of
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you know, West and Sean talking about space, which extends all the way
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back to the radio. And as we were doing our radio program some number
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of years ago, there were milestones in the development of the James web Space
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Telescope that just seemed like things were just taking much longer than they should and
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more money was being spent than it should. And you know, perhaps there
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was some astronomer that appeared on that radio show that maybe overly criticized the James
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web Space Telescope, and his name would be Sean And so so it's just
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appropriate for me to go ahead and eat micro and say it's not that those
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things weren't true, by the way, but now that it's fully up and
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online, sometimes you just have to acknowledge that truly great projects just take a
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little extra time and sometimes a little extra money to really bring them to fruition.
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And that's certainly the case with this program. And I think it's coming
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out of Independence Day and this is you know, are loose tie and all
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this. But Americans like a comeback story. They like an underdog story.
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They like a comeback story. And I don't know of a better underdog story
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or comeback story really of this kind than this telescope because, as you point
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out, we were critical. You knew more about it than I did,
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but I of course jumped on and piled on and I haven't shut up about
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them dropping it, and I'll probably never shut up about it. But I
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mean, I don't know if there's a better right up until the end story.
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I mean, this is like they're gonna put you in to take the
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last second shot in a basketball game and then you, you know, basically
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like, okay, we're going to you, and as you're walking back out
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on the court, you trip and break your ankle, and then you realize,
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okay, maybe it's not broken, and I'm still going to take the
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shot, and then you make the shot. I mean, I guess that's
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kind of what it is. I don't know, but it's a crazy story
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to know the history of getting this thing into service where it needed to be
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right up until that moment that they dropped it. And it's a very complex
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device. It's not like dropping it is no big deal. This isn't This
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isn't you know, dropping a bag phone. This is more like dropping one
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of those phones from about five years ago that every time you drop it everything
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shatters. Somehow everything didn't shatter and it's still become this incredible success story.
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Yes, it's a thirteen thousand pound phone with lots of mirrors and crystals and
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there's all sorts of things that have to be exactly in the right place for
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everything to work correctly, and then they dropped it. But dropping it is
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the final whoopsie of its story of its time. But this goes back to
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ninety three. Yeah, so this is the important part. It's a thirty
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year project, ladies and gentlemen to this point because it began with an organization
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called the Space Telescope Institute Council, and the Space Telescope Institute itself was formed
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for the Hubble space Telescope, and so they're also though an advisory group that
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helps NASA decide on all space based astronomy missions right. So in nineteen ninety
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three, the Space Telescope Institute Council appointed a committee to study twenty first century
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space astronomy missions and they came up with the idea of the Next Generations Space
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Telescope, a follow up to Hubble. And we knew it for a long
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time as MGST, and that's when I was a young astronomy students. That's
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what we talked about. We talked about NGST, next Generation Space Telescope.
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Well, that later became the James Webb Space Telescope. The James Webb Space
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Telescope was named after the administrator for NASA during the Apollo program. His name
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was James Webb. He was the administrator of NASA from nineteen sixty one to
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nineteen sixty eight, and that's where we were doing the big run up for
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the eventual landing on the Moon and would occurred in nineteen sixty nine. So
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James Webb's work as NASA administrator was instrumental in landing human beings on the Moon.
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So they named this telescope in honor of James Webb. Now the James
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web Space Telescope is mostly an America project, mostly a NASA project, but
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it does have collaborators from the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency,
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so there's various collaborations instruments on board and some of the mechanics that were developed
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by the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. So it is an
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international collaboration effort designed to be a successor for Hubble. We know that it
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finally did launch, even after being dropped on Christmas Day. It was like
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a present Christmas Day of twenty twenty one. They launched on an Area in
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five rocket from French Guiana. It did not launch from American shores. That's
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because they wanted to get it down closer to the equator to have less energy
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to get it into an equatorial orbit around the Earth before then moving it out
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of orbit of the Earth entirely off to a place called lagrange point number two.
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So what's a lagrange point. Well, that's an orbital stable point where
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you can place some object and due to the mutual gravitation of the Sun and
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the Earth, it's kind of a gravitational stable point, which means it'll just
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follow right along with the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. So technically,
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well, I guess, actually, the James Webb Space Telescope does not
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orbit the Earth. It orbits the Sun. It just does so in the
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special gravitational balance point called a lagrange point. And if you think about where
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it's at relative to the Earth, it's on the far side of the Earth
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from the Sun. That would automatically make that the night side. So it's
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on the dark side of the Earth at this lagrange point. So how far
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away is a lagrange point, by the way, Well, it's it's about
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one point I'm sorry, it's about nine hundred and thirty thousand miles one point
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five million kilometers from the Earth. So anyway, so that's that's where Hubble
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space, I'm sorry, where the James web Space Telescope is when it was
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launched. All of those kinds of basic facts. Now here's something that's very
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important. When NASA stated the mission goals for the James Webb Space Telescope,
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these items were the mission goals number one, to search for the first galaxies
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or luminous objects formed after the Big Bang, the very earliest large structures to
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actually form stars. Ladies and gentlemen' that was goal number one. Goal number
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two determine how galaxies evolved from their formation during these early times until now,
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so put together the story of galaxy evolution. Now we already have a lot
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of information on that, but James Webb Space Telescope, with its additional capabilities
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that are just never existed before in humankind, can help fill in the gaps
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about our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. Number three observe the formation of
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stars from their very first stages until they form planetary systems, so help to
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trace out the birth of stars until they're a mature solar system with planets around
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it. And number four measure the physical and chemical properties of planetary systems.
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Well, when we say that when we think of planets, we think about
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the planets of our solar system, We'll remember there are planets around other stars
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as well, and we can see how planets are forming around other stars.
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So it's a it's a kind of a combined goal of studying our own solar
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system but also studying these solar systems and evolution. And as West mentioned at
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the top of the show, we're going to present some very interesting images that
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have been taken by James Webb. But you're going to see how basically they
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have already checked the boxes on elements of all four of their major goals in
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the first eighteen months of operation that you have to already call a very successful
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story of this very important mission to study our universe. So and at this
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point, as they say, everything else is gravy, but it's not like
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it's just that, because every single one of these images seems to get progressively
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more impressive. And the first one, and we'll talk about the images in
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a second, but are the first one was remarkable right out of the gate,
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and right away you're just saying, oh my gosh, this is such
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a win for everybody involved. I want to go back to the lagrange point
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thing because for folks now, and part of my role in this is to
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ask these kinds of questions because I think about and we've talked about this a
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lot in you know, thirteen plus years or whatever, we've been doing this
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in some form. But when you put something out like this in that point
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you talk about it's orbiting the Sun just like we are. Does it ever
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have to be tweaked? Is there ever any point where it drifts? Do
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they have to catch it up to us, or does it always stay at
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exactly that point that it's at from us from that distance. So so it's
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kind of interesting that that point in space itself is a stable point. In
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other words, UM, think of it kind of like a dip, and
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if the ball were to roll away from that point, it would naturally want
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to roll back toward it, right, So that's that's what it's meant by
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like a gravitational stable point. Well, it turns out that that the telescope
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itself is kind of doing that all the time, so it's not exactly at
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that point. It is actually going through this pattern that's people might know it
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as a listed you figure. That's that's something you can create, uh,
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you know, in in electronics, um anyway. So but the listed you
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figure is kind of like a fancy figure eight, and so it just goes
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in this sort of figure eight type orbit where it's moving both toward in a
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way from the planet Earth while also kind of going up and down, and
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the those two combined motions make this kind of bent circular figure that we again
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call a listened you figure. But it's but it's a geometric pattern that's around
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that l two point, And so the L two point, though itself is
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stable, the spacecraft does have on board, uh some some small retrorockets that
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can correct the orbit to some degree. So if we're to start to drift
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away from that, they do have some ability to nudge it back in place.
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But really it's a fairly stable point and it just hangs out there and
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just naturally goes around the Sun with the Earth. Pretty fascinating. And I
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don't know how much you know on the history of this, but how do
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they find something like this? At what point do they say, Oh,
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there's a spot there, we can just we can just put something and it's
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just gonna chill there and it's just gonna stay in its spot. I mean
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that that and and that may be a full on space history lesson that maybe
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we don't have time for. But but the quick story, there's a quick
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story behind that, and that's that they're smart guys out there, that's right.
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So we rely on these smart guys to kind of come up with things.
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And the mathematician Lagrange, while studying the mutual gravitation or the combined gravitational
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field of both the Earth and the Sun together, said, well, wait
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a minute, there are places that are in geometric locations around the Earth where
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the Earth and the Sun's gravitational field counteract one another, and therefore they should
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be gravitational neutral points. So you asked, you asked how they found it.
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They found it on a chalkboard, right, or they found it on
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somebody Lagrange himself sitting there with a piece of paper and doing these calculations and
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saying, oh, look, these things should exist. And then in the
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space age, you know, I think Lagrange lived a long time ago.
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Space Age, we go out there and it's like, well, sure enough,
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you know, we can put a satellite right here, and it just
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kind of bobs in and out around this gravitational stable point and it works exactly
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like Lagron said, that's cool. Why don't we use it for our next
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big telescope. And so that's what they did with the with the James Web
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Space telescope. Pretty pretty fascinating. All right, we're gonna talk about the
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images like we're just gonna in no particular or I don't know, I guess
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you've kind of ranked five maybe based on your thoughts, your opinions on it.
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But well, we'll go through five of the images that have been captured
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by the James Webb Space Telescope, five of maybe the most significant ones.
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We'll talk about that right after this. Okay, so we've been talking about
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James Webb Space Telescope. We've been talking about the successes of it, the
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history of it, the accomplishments of it. It's hard not to measure accomplishments
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in photos. That's what it's doing for us is providing these incredible images after
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having a scan of your images that you picked, and we'll put these on
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our social media on a Facebook. If you're not already following Made of Stars
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podcast on Facebook, you should be. We'll put these on there so that
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you can follow along. But I got no issues with this as a top
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five, none at all. They're all great, and especially to me,
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number one, hands down should be number one. So yeah, as long
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as you had that at one, I can live with the rest of them.
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And again, this is a very important order because this is exactly the
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order that Wes and I wanted. So there's no real scientific justification, none
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really copied anybody else's order. I just like these pictures and so we're going
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to put them in the order that I like best. And so that's kind
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of that's kind of what happened. And you know, West West agrees with
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me, which I appreciate that West. And so so this is how it's
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going to be. And if you don't like these, if you think there's
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better James Webb Space Telescope images that should be in the top five, you
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know, make sure you contact us through that Facebook page and you can just
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let us know. We love her opinions are, even though they'll be wrong,
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that's right. We'd love to hear from your opinions. And I used
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to I used to do movie reviews on another job, and I remember telling
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people, if you don't like my reviews, you know, get your own
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magazine. Uh. It was, you know, but that's not really what
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we're saying now. We're just saying, let us know if you don't like
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the order. So we're maybe we're just inviting friendly debate on the subject.
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You know, I don't know. It's not like it's not like this really
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matters. You know, it's not like there's gonna be an official record,
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but you're gonna be wrong anyway. That's right. This is this is the
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correct order. I don't know how official any of this is, but for
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us it's official. We start at the Cosmic Cliffs. This is one of
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the first images that we got, and it's just there's so much to explain
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in this image coming in at number five the Cosmic Cliffs. Yeah. So
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the one thing that's particularly interesting about this to me and why it had to
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make the top five. It's, of course a beautiful image of the interior
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portion of the Karina Nebula. But again the reason I put it in the
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top five is because it was one of the first images released. And the
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day these images came out, West and I looked at them, had a
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conversation and said, my goodness, this is just so much unbelievable detail.
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And I think that's really, you know, the impression that anybody who follows
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space and space science really had of these of these pictures is I just cannot
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believe the absolute fantastic amount of detail that can be gleaned from this shot of
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the interior of the Karina nebuas something we've seen pictures of a lot from different
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various telescopes, but not at this level of detail. And again, folks,
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I'm going to encourage you if you don't go look them up on our
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social media on our Facebook page for the podcast here go out and just search
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these images because they are absolutely gorgeous. You can see structures of both gas
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and dust, four ground stars, background stars, but the detail is absolutely
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phenomenal. And again, this was one of the very first images released.
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This was our first look at the capabilities of this instrument, and it just
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led us to say wow. So this will always be one of James Webb's
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greatest images for me personally, because it made that first impression of just what
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an incredible instrument this was going to be. So that's why the star forming
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region in the Karna Nebula came in number five. If you've ever walked the
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streets of a you know, really big city, New York comes to mind
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for me because I remember many times walking the streets in New York and you
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see the spray paint artists. This looks like something that they do, right.
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This looks like they're gonna put the plate down, they're gonna spray paint
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around it, They're gonna put the city in the background. But there's no
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city in the background. It's just this incredible imagery of of these cosmic cliffs.
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If you will it just looks incredible, all right, Number four on
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our list. Oh wait, we gotta stop for a request and dedication.
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Now, I'm just kidding. Number four. That's my best. Casey Casem,
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I got nothing. They ever find that guy, I'm not sure.
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I was just talking with my brother a couple of weeks ago about the doing
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the radio bit Where in the world is Casey Kasem's body? That was a
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weird ending to a Hall of Fame legendary broadcast career. But anyway, uh,
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the first direct image of an alien world comes in at number four,
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So, unlike the other four on the list, this one, you it's
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not necessarily one that you would frame up and put up as artwork. But
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as West very correctly pointed out, all of the images, all of the
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other images on this list, man, they're just so beautiful that they just
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look like fabulous works of art. This one, however, is showing something
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that's amazing because for the very first time in human history, people took a
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picture of a planet orbiting another star at direct image. So that was the
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first time that humankind had a telescope good enough to actually get a direct image
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of a planet that was orbiting. Not our Sun orbiting yet another star,
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an exoplanet, so the Exoplanets Catalog number was called HIP four twenty six B.
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It was initially discovered in twenty seventeen. This image was released on September
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first of last year, twenty twenty two. And the interesting thing about the
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planet itself, it's about twelve times the size of Jupiter, and it's about
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one hundred times further from its parent star than the Earth is from the Sun,
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or we wouldn't know that as one hundred au. So it's a distance
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of about one hundred au away from its parent star. So it's a big
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planet and it's you know, relatively far from from its parents star. So
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by comparison, when Pluto was a planet, Pluto is about forty times the
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distance from Earth to Sun away from from the Sun, so this would be
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more than twice as far away from its parent star as Pluto is from our
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Sun. So it's way out there. But that makes it a good planet,
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to a good candidate planet to try to image, and they were able
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to do that. They used that with a variety of tools on board the
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James Webspace Telescope, including something called a coronagraph tool, which is basically a
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disc that blocks out the bright light from the parent star so that you can
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see what's what light is coming from around it. And so there's a they
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image it in successive wavelengths. There's a several multi wavelength image of this thing.
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But just by virtue of the fact that they got a picture of a
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planet around another star, that makes this worthy of the top five. So
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number four is direct image of an alien world. All right, let's talk
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about this honorable mention. Maybe this should have been the request and dedication part.
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I don't know, the first spectrum of an exoplanet atmosphere. Yeah,
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the honorable mention kind of goes hand in hand with the first imaging of an
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exoplanet, and that's that. We then also pointed a spectrograph on James Web
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at the atmosphere of another planet and we actually pulled out what chemical constituents are
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in a planet's atmosphere which is orbiting another star. Abs absolutely phenomenal achievement for
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science. The planet is called WASP thirty nine B and again these have to
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do with catalog systems, and so that's where that crazy name comes from.
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But it's in the constellation of Virgo. It is now the most explored world
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outside of our Solar System by virtue of the measurements that James Webb was able
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to take of the planet and its atmosphere. So that's an honorable mention goes
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hand in hand with the first direct imaging game of an exoplanet. Really awesome
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achievements from James Webb. You can say Wasp is some kind of cataloging name.
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I'll just maintain that it's named after my good friend Freckles Evangeline Lily herself
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aka the Wasp, all right, number three, the Ghost of Jupiter.
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So there was an image taken of Jupiter by the James Webb. They use
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the near infrared camera. But it turns out when you point an infrared camera
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at a planet in our Solar System, what you get is a heat image.
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Effectively, it shows the temperature gradients within the various cloud layers on the
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outer part of Jupiter, which means some of the parts that you would expect
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to be bright are actually dark because they're cooler, and some of the parts
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that you would expect to be dark are actually bright because they're hotter, Like
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the Great Red Spot, for instance, is bright in infrared where it's reasonably
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dark compared to the rest of the atmosphere invisible light. So when you see
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Jupiter with this weird near infrared camera image, it tells scientists a lot about
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the physical structure of those cloud layers based on temperature. But to your eye,
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it just looks like, WHOA, what did somebody do to Jupiter?
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You can almost see through it. It's almost transparent. It looks ghost like,
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which it does, so it's very very cool in that sense. Additionally,
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you can actually see the rings of Jupiter in this image, and several
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of the moons of Jupiter, again, all because they are warm by comparison
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to the dark background of space. So whereas they might not show up brightly
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in visible eye images, in infrared images where it's a heat picture, they're
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warm by comparison, and so they just stand out, and so it's really
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cool to see that. You can also see in the same image aurora phenomenon
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taking place at both the north pole and the south pole of Jupiter, which
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is interactions between Jupiter's very strong magnetic field and particles coming in from the Sun,
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and so all of these things make a fantastic picture of a Solar System
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object. The ghost of Jupiter coming in at number three, A look at
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Jupiter unlike how we've seen it before. All right, let's talk about the
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phantom galaxy and at number two. I have to admit that, even as
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an astronomer, when I first saw this image, I thought it was fake.
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Yeah, I thought somebody had faked a picture and said, oh look
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this is James Webb. Blah blah blah. No, ladies and gentlemen,
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it is not fake. It is a real galaxy. It's taken at long
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infrared wavelengths one of the different multiple cameras on James Webb's face telescope, and
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the what that camera shows is a strange fiber like structure patterns within the fil
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arms. Well, we're used to looking at galaxies like this and seeing very
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more or less filled in solid spiral arms. But this thing appears to be
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like Swiss cheese. You're just like looking through vast holes in these spiral arms.
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Well, what you're really seeing again, it's a heat image. You're
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really seeing where gases are hot heated to those high temperatures by stars forming within
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those gas clouds within the spiral arms of this galaxy. The galaxy, by
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the way, is the phantom galaxy. We know it as M seventy four,
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MESA seventy four or NGC six twenty eight. Those are both catalog numbers
29:04
for this galaxy. The fact that it's a Messier object M seventy four means
29:08
it's visible with a backyard telescope. So the Messier list was done in the
29:12
sixteen hundreds where telescopes were not very advanced, So if it's on the Messier
29:17
list, it's on your list for being able to find it with a backyard
29:19
telescope. So you can see the same object, but it will not look
29:23
like the JWST picture. And this image is so striking and so spectacular that
29:30
it just visually draws you in west mentioned before. Looks like artwork done rather
29:36
than something from the physical universe. Looks like somebody just being creative and having
29:40
a good time, which is why it fooled me at first. But when
29:42
you realize what it's showing you, it's actually showing you places inside the spire
29:48
alarms where stars are being formed that you could not otherwise see. In other
29:55
words, if you took a visible at picture of the same galaxy, you
29:59
would see these steamed star forming regions. They are hidden inside clouds of gas
30:03
and dust. So from a scientific standpoint as well as a visual standpoint,
30:10
and absolutely over the top spectacular image, and that is why it is number
30:15
two. The only one that can beat that and your description of it perfect.
30:22
I look at it, and I see I just imagine like a different
30:25
view of whenever we see the images of what DNA. To me, this
30:29
is what the DNA model would look like from the bottom almost, That's kind
30:33
of what I see. But anyway, the only image that can beat that
30:36
is the Infinity Gauntlet itself, the Pillars of Creation. It really does look
30:42
like this. You and I I think discussed this on another one of our
30:45
earlier podcasts, where this image just looks like the hand of Danos just sticking
30:52
out there into space and taking over the universe. But it is, ladies
30:56
and gentlemen, the Pillars of Creation, a central structure within what is known
31:00
as the Eagle nebula, another backyard telescope object, but once again you do
31:06
not see it like this. These structures are massive in size, but they
31:14
also reveal the location where brand new baby stars are being formed and in the
31:19
web's imagery and managed to capture these protostars in the act of becoming stars,
31:25
which is just pretty amazing. Each one of these little globules inside these massive
31:32
tall columns are actually bigger than our whole solar system, which then that puts
31:37
it in perspective of the size of this thing. It's absolutely vast, and
31:41
these stars are so young that they have not yet begun to burn hydrogen so
31:48
there, so they're not even what we would call main sequence stars yet they
31:52
are protostars stars information. But beyond that, the just the abs absolute grandeur
32:00
and beauty of this image is so over the top that it had to be
32:07
number one on our list. Ladies and gentlemen, go check it out for
32:09
yourself. The James Webb Space Telescope image of the Pillars of Creation number one
32:15
on our list of the top five best images Greatest images from the James web
32:20
Space Telescope. Let's talk about astronomy nights, because you guys are regularly do
32:25
astronomy nights sometimes at the Cocola Space Science Center. But this summer you've been
32:30
taken advantage of a partnership with Callaway Gardens and an ability to get to a
32:37
place where you're kind of away from the lights and you're able to see things
32:39
a little differently. Yeah, exactly. So, ladies and gentlemen, I
32:43
would just encourage you to go out with the astronomy team from the Space Science
32:46
Center and see the nighttime sky in a place that's far away from city lights.
32:51
Callaway Gardens, a natural park like area just north of the city of
32:55
Columbus, Georgia in Harris County, and folks art can actually show you some
33:00
of the objects that we've talked about in this list today, but with your
33:05
own eye through a telescope, which is just amazing. It's a great program.
33:08
It's a collaboration with the education team at Callaway Gardens. If you want
33:13
to know more about this program and all the programs at the Coca Cola Space
33:15
Science Center, including our holiday hours. By the way, just check out
33:19
our website www dot cc SSC dot org. Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot org.
33:27
Thank you for listening, and we'll do it again next week. Overhead
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