Bordeaux Wine Enthusiasts

So I've known you all for like 21 years.
We have seen many great (and bad) things.
Trust me. Trust your BD.
If the James Webb Telescope finally gets up and running later this year, it will be about the greatest thing that has happened during our time together.
We will see the beginning of time.
Stand by, in November (oh please, oh please), we will witness one of the greatest achievements of mankind, and most humans don't even know anything about it. I don't care.
All I'm saying is... Get ready to pull out your best champagne. And hold your breath....

Very cool.
Champagne so we can taste the stars to celebrate seeing them.

I was at a star party last night with my new scope and a few guys from the Space Telescope Science Institute. They are endless founts of knowledge.

Can't wait to hear the reports on your telescope, David.

The James Webb Telescope is arguably the greatest accomplishment in the history of mankind.

I can't wait to lift a glass of my best champagne.

I was ready to go for a Celestron 8" SCT but wait times were almost a year, so I got 4” refractor with a 3-month wait - a Tele Vue NP101is. The tracking mount was still on back order when it came in a few weeks ago. I couldn’t wait so I got a manual Alt/Az mount with slo-mo controls. When the tracking mount comes in I’ll leave the manual one at our beach place.

Astrophotography seems to be all the rage these days but I’m not interested in fussing with perfect alignment and tracking, cameras and computers, "gathering data" for hours and spending more hours processing it. Maybe the bug will bite me but I’m strictly visual now.

With the light pollution in our back yard and the local club’s slightly darker site it’s all planets and lunar right now. Great views of Jupiter and Saturn and some of their moons last night. Made me feel like a teenager again (in a good way!). Andromeda was a faint fuzzy even with the new moon. Probably darker skies and an 8” scope would be better for DSOs, but still not like the photos guys get with hours of stacked subexposures.

Assateague Island is a 20 min drive from our beach place and should be substantially darker.

Let's also hope it works when it goes into orbit, as it can't really be repaired from space.

Its orbit will be 4x the distance of the moon to the earth. Which makes it unreachable by today's manned spacecraft.

But if it works, it will be spectacular, although very different from Hubble.

They hopefully learned from Hubble and won't have to do a fix for mis-shaped mirrors.

The moving parts involved to make this work, a million miles away, are mind boggling.
This is a project that crosses over from science into philosophy and the meaning of existence.
Let's have a champagne celebration when it launches!

Quite a project:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021 ... =TNY_Daily

A couple of videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUAvXYW5bmI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P8fKd0IVOs

Thanks David. One of the great underrated stories of the Webb telescope is that the decades-long delay in completing it actually ended up working in our favor. When it was originally planned, it was not designed to explore for conditions sustainable for life on exoplanets. Because of technological advances in the last 20 years, it may not only be able to detect signs of atmospheres and elements sustainable for life, but also evidence of life itself on planets that we can't even see and don't even know exist as of today.

This tool will help us settle for all times, whether the best vineyards on Mars are because of their terroir, or climat.

Certainly lots of sun, and the nights are, um, cool.

Grrr, launch the thing already, will you?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnic ... d/%3famp=1

Looks like December 22. They’ve started fueling.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2021/11/24/ ... 22-launch/

Let’s light this candle!

Nice bit on the JWST on 60 Minutes last night. A couple of the guys in the local astronomy club are engineers that worked on it. They’re excited and full of nervous anticipation.

Meanwhile, we have the forward-looking leadership of Rep. Gohmert to link our next foray into space with mitigation of climate change! Sounds easier than reducing greenhouse gas emissions, doesn’t it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LQ0Ey07LAI

I watched that last night, Dave, actually found myself getting emotional. A staggering achievement.

Come on baby, let’s pull this off!

Launch delayed to 12/24 at the earliest. Communication issues between observatory and launch vehicle need ironing out. Best to take time to get it right. No second chances with this one, unlike Hubble.

https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2021/12/14/ ... te-update/

The local astronomy group is thinking about doing a Zoom for the launch. Couple of guys are data scientists and engineers who contributed to the effort so should be an informed discussion - likely over my head.

Sigh.

Oh man Dave, that moment at about the 2:20 mark, when she hesitates at the question, "How confident are you...?" ... a lump came in my throat.

I remember when Gus Grissom said (paraphrasing) "If we can't communicate between buildings how are we going to get to the moon?" (A little while later on that horrific late afternoon in '67, he and two other Apollo astronauts were dead).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMxdeUJ0v2c

I'm posting the 60 minutes story here because it is a pretty good layman's explanation of a project that, literally, at least in my humble opinion, may be one of the two or three greatest accomplishments in the history of the species.

If you haven't followed this project, you owe it to yourselves. we are talking about an accomplishment of Einstein/Newton proportions.

This project is so astounding that, for a radical atheist like me, is almost "godlike."

With JSWT, we are crossing from science into philosophy.

Yeah Jim there are literally thousands of things that all have to work right. She knows that any one of them going wrong could ruin the mission.

They’ve loaded the JWST observatory into the Ariane 5 launch vehicle.
Communications issues apparently solved.
Launch is now scheduled for December 24 at 7:20 AM EST.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/

I’ll be up watching.

I'm feeling it!

This project is insane:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aICaAEXDJQQ

That was a fabulous video.

Launch now set for December 25th at 7:20 AM EST.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/

Jesus Christ.

They cited anticipated weather issues but I think they were really worried about clear airspace with Santa flying around on the 24th.

Ah yes, I forgot the Santa factor.

This is all reminding me, of course, of the famous Apollo 8 Christmas Eve mission. Gosh, I remember it like yesterday. I was 10 years old. It was Christmas Eve, 1968. One of the worst years in American history. MLK and Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. The country was beset by riots. A year before, the magnificent Apollo program had stalled Kennedy's dream, of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade, as a result of the horrific Apollo 1 fire that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. But more than a year later, Wally Schirra and his crew brought a new and completely gutted Apollo command module through a perfect, technical flight on Apollo 7. The conservative scientists at NASA thought numerous more tests were required before venturing to the moon. But the diminutive Frank Borman walked into the room. Frank was short in stature but he had he heart of a giant. And he said, basically, fuck this. Let's go to the moon. He had his boys, a dude named Jimmy Lovell, and the younger Bill Anders. And, in a mission that was arguably more ambitious than the Apollo 11 landing itself, the Apollo 8 crew exited Earth's orbit -- the first humans to do so -- and made the quarter million mile transverse to the moon, three men, with the hopes of mankind watching, at the end of a horrible year. They passed through "TLI" -- trans-lunar injection -- a propulsive maneuver that ejects a spacecraft from earth orbit toward the moon... And on Christmas Eve 1968, the three man crew of Apollo 8 entered into lunar orbit... "the first humans to do so.... after 4 billion years... in OUR lifetimes... As an 11 year old boy with coke bottle glasses, I was in utter and complete awe of Frank Borman and every molecule of the Apollo program. The Apollo program changed my life. It inspired me to do everything I have accomplished to this day. I was in complete and utter jaw-dropping awe of everything Apollo produced. Fortunately, I had working-class parents who recognized that, and facilitated it. As a 10 year old, I followed every move of the Apollo astronauts. And I remember like yesterday, when Apollo 8, on Christmas Eve 1968, went into lunar orbit. The grainy, ghost like images, seen for the first time in 4 billion years, from the surface of the moon. This was the mission of the famous "Earth Rise" photo. They did a prime time video on the three networks that existed at the time. They showed black and white footage of the lunar surface, seen from about 60 miles up, and then after an hour or so, to the surprise of many, and with a little bit of controversy, they decided to recite Genesis. Nobody, including the NASA geeks, expected it. It was one of the great moments in history. It gives an old atheist like me goose bumps to this day. It is one of the great achievements in the history of the human species, an event that has inspired me to this day, as I enter into old age... The astronauts of Apollo 8, on Christmas Eve 1968, at the end of that awful year, on the first rendezvous of mankind to the ancient surface of the moon, reciting the first book of Genesis....

A nice story about the flight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL66BJdGQYw

And a brief uninterrupted video of the Genesis reading, Christmas Eve, 1968...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njpWalYduU4&t=97s

Happy holidays, BWEers, far and wide!

I suppose I can credit the Apollo program for starting me on the path of becoming a space cadet.
Happy holidays!

NASA live stream of launch, scheduled for tomorrow at 7:20 AM EST, will be here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nT7JGZMbtM

ESA live stream links are here:
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration ... aunch_live

Weather report is good, it’s still a go.
Some pics from ESA: https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeans ... otostream/

5 minutes to go

Godspeed!

That footage as the solar array opened up was fantastic!

Terrific! Great start to a long journey.

We'll be coming up to an important point in a couple of hours, the mid-course correction burn to move the Webb from high Earth orbit towards its destination around Lagrange point 2 (L2).

A note from one of the guys in the local astronomy club who worked on the Webb (being close to Baltimore and Goddard there are some real rocket scientists in the group - a little intimidating but they’re as kind as they are serious):

to howar...@googlegroups.com
Hi Gene,

The Ariane 5 launched with about 95% of the velocity needed to reach L2, so the current orbit around Earth has a hugely high apogee -- it's already about 66K miles from Earth. About 12 hours after launch, JWST will use one of its thrusters to correct the speed to take it out to L2; this is called Mid-Course Correction 1a (MCC-1a). This is a time-critical burn since the later it's done the more fuel it takes, and using more fuel now means a shorter mission. In a couple more days, there is an opportunity to perform another correction, MCC-1b, to fine-tune the speed if necessary. In about 29 days, JWST will reach the halo orbit insertion point, and the other thruster on JWST will fire to put it into orbit around L2.

The halo orbit is large, and is highly-inclined to the ecliptic plane. The diameter of the orbit is about 200,000 miles (sorry, I don't know the actual number) and the orbital period is about 6 months.

Go Webb!

Wayne

This has been an incredible story and exciting to watch the launch today. How good is that to do it on Christmas morning! Amazing what mankind can accomplish when people work together. Thanks for keeping us informed along the way and look forward to continued updates but we're in a dark zone for 6 months?? before JWST reaches L2 and becomes functional if I read correctly but I may be wrong on this timeframe.

My brother Tom and I both just were reminded of the famous Apollo 13 “burn,” when the crew climbed from the crippled command module and into the lunar module Aquarius and fired its descent engine, not for the purpose of landing on the moon but slowing the two connected crafts into an orbit around the moon, from which they whipsawed back to Earth with not much oxygen left to spare….

https://youtu.be/05PNLKAw6jM

Sir Isaac Newton at work.

A good summary of the key upcoming milestones:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2021/12/24/ ... r-liftoff/

Good start. Long way to go.