Blake Bullock
James Webb Space Telescope Campaign Lead
Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems
For more information, please visit: https://give.fit.edu/james-webb-space-telescope
1. Blake Bullock
James Webb Space Telescope Campaign Lead
Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems
Approved for Public Release by NASA, 25 May 2011, NGAS Case 11-0676
7. The Milky Way
Scale: If the Sun were a small pebble:
The nearest star? Orlando (approximately 100km)
The Center of the galaxy? A trip to the moon
8. World’s Most Powerful Telescope: ~1920
• Hubble showed
spiral nebulae
were “island universes”
• Showed the Universe is expanding.
100 inch Hooker telescope
(Mt. Wilson, just north of
Pasadena, CA)
12. 3 million light years Milky
Way
Milky Way is a Member
of the “Local Group”
13. One Among Many Superclusters in the Universe...
300 million light years
Milky
Way
14.
15. WEBB: Our Knowledge of the Universe
is About to Radically Expand...
…Again
Hubble
Ultra
Deep
Field
Hubble
Earth
Moon
LaGrange
Point 2
Simulation of
what WEBB
will see
17. A Sense of Time…
14 Billion Years Ago
If the full expanse of time were crunched into 1 year,
then Shakespeare wrote his plays ~ 1 second ago
18. 14 Billion Years Ago
Overview of Scientific Cosmology
• Time & Space began
~14 billion years ago
in the big bang
• The Universe has been
expanding & cooling
since then
• Hot in the beginning:
a sea of elementary particles
• Out of this simple start
emerged all of the complex
structure we see today
19. From Hubble to Webb
Hubble “Ultra Deep Field” is the
deepest image of the universe ever
taken in visible light
Simulation of the same field with Webb
shows many more objects in much
greater detail
Hubble Ultra Deep Field Simulated James Webb Field
24. Large primary mirror for increased sensitivity &
detail
Deployable to fit inside rocket fairing
Passively cooled by sunshield to avoid limited
lifetime of coolant
Infrared sensitive: due to expansion of universe,
light from oldest galaxies is redshifted, or stretched,
from visible into the infrared
Observe the earliest, faintest galaxies,
beyond what Hubble can see
Hubble Ultra Deep Field, pictured here, reveals some of the oldest galaxies ever
seen, formed 13 billion years ago when the universe was 5% its present age.
From Hubble to Webb
CHALLENGE
SOLUTIONS
For centuries the vastness of the night sky has prompted humansto ponder the big questionsWho are we? Why are we here?What is here?
Time has yielded technical innovations that have improved discovery and allowed mankind to view the heavens more clinically, yet with the same sense of wonder
With each step in observatory size & power, the field of Astrophysics has expanded.Our understanding of celestial bodies has progressively moved further and further and further outward. We’ve built very capable terrestrial instruments. We are here at one of them tonight. These have raised discovery to remarkable new levels revealing things that no one could have imaged
Look up and see this band of lightBut this is a look at the Milky Way from “above”
With the advent of access to space, the observational high ground has moved above the earth.Today space-based observatories float along in the heavens, peering outwards, looking ever further.Northrop Grumman has been committed to Human discovery of space fielding 3-4 (verifying number)? of the Nation’s great observatories.These, together with Hubble, have yielded absolutely stunning results that serve only to whet our appetitesfor more
Here is Our sun is one starBillions of stars in our GalaxyIf the Sun were the size of a grain of sand, our Galaxy would be the size of the Earthwhat one of those dots looks like up close – Hubble picture
But discovery informs further discovery.Dimmer, older light, which Blake will talk to you about in a few minutes, is accessible by • going out further, • building a larger, more sensitive telescope• that is specifically aimed to collect this older light.With JWST, which Scott will speak to you on in great detail, our collective understanding will travel back in time eons further than we could with previous systems.JWST will retrieve this data in a 100th of the time of Hubble.It is our privilege to support NASA and the Nation – for that matter – Humanity in the continued quest for knowledge with the next great space telescope, JWST
1929: Hubble showed that all galaxies were seemingly moving away from us.The light of a galaxy that is moving away from us will be “redshifted”, or the wavelength gets longer
Age of the universe = ~14 billion yearsShakespeare ~1600, (400 years ago)
The Eagle Nebula in visible light (left) and infrared light (right)Because infrared light can penetrate clouds of dust, infrared telescopes allow us to see through dust to the stars and objects within
