University of Toledo astronomer Rupali Chandar was among countless scientists worldwide who expressed awe on Tuesday about NASA’s release of the first images generated by the James Webb Space Telescope.
For Ms. Chandar, the excitement was like Christmas morning because, coincidentally, that’s when the massive telescope was launched aboard an Ariane 5 rocket.
After years of delay, the telescope was launched into outer space on Dec. 25 from Europe's Spaceport near Kourou, French Guiana. By launching it that close to the equator, Earth’s spin gave the rocket an additional push.
Ms. Chandar, professor and associate chairman of UT’s physics and astronomy department, said she remembers watching the 7 a.m. launch with her children, hoping there would not be yet another delay or complication. There had been many.
Upon seeing the launch go smoothly, she and other scientists blew a sigh of relief.
“I cannot tell you how nervous we were,” she said. “That day, there were a lot of butterflies and excitement.”
Now, with the first images coming in, their expectations have been blown away, and they realize that all of the anxiety about the project’s fate for many years was worth it.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It is hard to put into words how life-changing this is,” Ms. Chandar said. “We can already tell this data is going to reveal secrets and tell us how the universe has worked.”
The telescope is a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency.
Ms. Chandar agreed that Tuesday was a pivotal day for mankind, and that Webb images will change the course of astronomy much like the $4.7 billion Hubble Space Telescope did when it was placed into Earth’s lower orbit in 1990.
The telescope is a $10 billion space telescope that is already delivering on its mission to give the world sharper and more distant images of deep space than ever before. It has more than 15 times the viewing area of Hubble.
And UT is going to be one of the first recipients of data it collects.
By the end of this week or the beginning of next week, data is expected to be delivered for five UT research projects which NASA accepted long before the launch as part of a highly competitive application process.
In addition to Ms. Chandar, the UT research team includes Michael Cushing, a UT professor of physics and astronomy and director of UT’s Ritter Planetarium; J.D. Smith, professor and director of UT’s Ritter Astrophysical Research Center; Tom Megeath, UT Ritter Astrophysical Research Center, and Thomas Lai, a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center. At the time of his application, Mr. Lai was close to getting his PhD from UT.
One of the projects pertains to a subject unfamiliar to many non-astronomers, the phenomenon known as “brown dwarfs,” also known as failed stars. Those are ones that never attained the right hydrogen and helium mix to become full-fledged stars.
Ms. Chandar is just giddy about the possibilities for attaining more knowledge about the universe, which she said is believed to be about 14 billion years old. Webb is already generating data about a galaxy believed to be about 13.1 billion years old, one of the oldest.
The resolution is so magnificent the telescope can even detect dust particles floating in outer space. They emit no light, but can be seen blocking light behind them.
“We're going to learn so many things that are new,” Ms. Chandar said. “We’re going to have a lot of fun with this.”
Much of the imagery Webb generates will be used by astronomers throughout the world to help better understand the origins of our universe.
All astronomers who’ve had their research projects chosen are being notified by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, when their images and data will be available for viewing online, initially by them only. The institute is the operations center for Hubble and Webb.
From more than 1,000 submitted proposals, NASA selected 286 projects.
President Biden released Webb’s first full-color image on Monday night during an event at the White House.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the powerful telescope is “just the start of what we can accomplish in the future when we work together for the benefit of humanity."
On Tuesday, NASA described the first batch of Webb-produced images as the “dawn of a new era in astronomy.”
First Published July 12, 2022, 10:37 p.m.
