Waterloo astronomer waits for his turn on the James Webb Space Telescope & More Trending News – UP Jobs News

WATERLOO REGION — Brian McNamara is ready for his turn to make use of the most superior expertise ever deployed by astronomers — the James Webb Space Telescope.

McNamara chairs the division of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo, and late this yr or early subsequent, he’ll use the area telescope to extra intently examine the Phoenix galaxy cluster.

The James Webb Space Telescope — JWST for quick — was launched Christmas Day 2021 and the first pictures have been publicly launched July 12.

“The images just took my breath away,” stated McNamara.

His proposal to scrutinize the Phoenix galaxy cluster was accepted by NASA, which selects the analysis initiatives from amongst the hundreds it receives from astronomers round the world.

The Phoenix galaxy cluster incorporates the first confirmed supermassive black gap. The cluster is 5.7 billion gentle years from Earth. A lightweight yr is a measure of distance — the distance gentle travels in a single yr, which is 9.5 trillion kilometres.

McNamara can hardly wait for his time on the area telescope. After seeing the JWST photos of a galaxy cluster known as Stephan’s Quintet, his enthusiasm for the expertise has no bounds. Stephan’s Quintet is a grouping of 5 galaxies in the constellation Pegasus.

“You can see dust being drawn out of the galaxies, dust and gas,” stated McNamara. “This is the raw material for creating new stars, and you can see the stars that are being created during this fairly violent process.”

The JWST is certainly one of humanity’s finer moments, he added, requiring the co-operation of hundreds of technicians and scientists and tens of millions of taxpayers.

“It is the kind of thing that brings us all together,” stated McNamara. “Divisiveness just melts away and this really shows what we can accomplish.”

The JWST carries mission-critical expertise made in Cambridge by Honeywell Aerospace, previously referred to as Com Dev International: digital camera, steerage system, picture stabilizer and spectrometer.

The firm gained a contract from NASA in 2004, and delivered {hardware} and software program in 2012 for a spectrometer that collects and analyzes gentle in the infrared band. That gentle is so outdated, and has travelled thus far, that the human eye cannot see it.

The spectrometer permits astronomers to study the environment of distant planets. Each ingredient absorbs gentle at particular wavelengths distinctive to that atom. When astronomers take a look at the spectrum of a distant star or galaxy, they will decide its composition based mostly on these wavelengths — permitting them to detect carbon, water, oxygen and nitrogen, and even indicators of life.

“Because the taxpayers paid for it, this is our telescope, it’s humanity’s telescope,” stated McNamara. “I think this is an achievement we can all be proud of.”

Mike Hudson, one other UW astronomer, agrees about the significance of the JWST. “By going more into the infrared spectrum we can see these very, very distant galaxies and remember we are looking back in time,” Hudson stated.

He hopes the JWST will see and {photograph} a few of the oldest objects at the outer edges of the universe.

“So this is really most impressive — the ability to study in detail these very, very early galaxies, how quickly they are assembling, how many stars they are forming, what their structure is, what kind of things they are made of basically,” stated Hudson.

It took a era to design, fund, construct and launch the JWST. Scientists round the world watched the Christmas Day launch, and shared their reactions and hopes on Twitter.

“Everybody followed the launch and we all breathed a sigh of relief when it went smoothly and successfully,” stated Hudson. “You always worry because there are moving parts in space and if something goes wrong it is very difficult to fix it.”

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