kirkster501

I was observing from 18.00 to midnight and at the same time captured data from 17.00 yesterday until 06.30 this morning. Over 13 hours worth. That’s the best clear night I have ever had in the UK in 18 years of practical astronomy.

Me too. This is mission critical - nuclear level. Even if the sunshield didn’t work, there was still a mission of sorts. No secondary and, as well all know, JWST is a piece of space junk. It is broadcast on NASA live later.

Layer 4 just been tensioned. They are on the final layer now.

So pleased that things are going well so far. Let's hope it continues.

First membrane of the sunshield has been tensioned. Same motors for the other four so looking good. Fingers crossed 🤞🏻

It makes me wonder how honest the reviews are in magazines too. Are the magazines paid for these ads to review stuff or are they 100% independent and the reviewers can be 100% honest and if something sucks then they can say so?

Listen live now:

^^^^They will do membranes 2 and 3 tomorrow (Tuesday) and 4 and 5 on Wednesday.

There have been some issues with the solar panel subsystem and the motors that drive the sunshield tensioning are out of tolerance with expected temperatures. They have mocked this up on the JWST simulator. They have repositioned JWST attitude to the sun and this has sorted it out now. They are currently tensioning membrane 1.

Yes I saw that on the JWST NASA website. To get to the 7 Kelvin that the instruments require the vacuum between each membrane is essential, so even though the sunshield even as is is indeed providing some shielding (and some sort of plan B if tensioning failed), it is not enough to reach the required cryogenic temperatures that JWST needs for its stated science objectives.

Tensioning of the sunshield moved to tomorrow - 3rd Jan - as the team want to know more about how the spacecraft operates in space before embarking on the tensioning. Deployment Timeline Adjusted as Team Focuses on Observatory Operations – James Webb Space Telescope (nasa.gov)

The galaxy is PGC18705. This is still in the constellation of Orion.

I donated $50 to NINA.

Congratulations! Same time as I joined Chris.

As prompted by JOC, here is my image GIF of the James Webb Space Telescope at 21:30 UK time on 1 January 2022. It is 484000 miles away with both port and starboard booms of the sunshield extended. They have not as yet been tensioned. I got the Ephemeris data from NASA JPL Horizons tool. JWST is at the top of the image just to the right and can be seen as a small dot moving downwards. I have imaged asteroids and other objects with data from this tool and so 100% confident this is indeed the JWST. A small galaxy in the middle makes it quite interesting. 9 x 300s exposures with TEC140 with Atik 460 CCD and a luminance filter. All on MESU 200 mount and imaged with NINA and PHD2. I used PixInsight to preprocess and register the images and then made the GIF in Photoshop. Conditions and seeing dreadful. Such a shame that the weather since launch has been terrible for astronomy in the UK, otherwise could have captured lot of JWST sequences. Hope you like it and find it interesting. Steve

Yes it seems to be playing TEC140 and Atik 460, luminance only. I will post it in the animation section.

Here is another. At the top centre moving downwards. A GIF from Photoshop of nine registered 300s subs. I am not sure they play on the SGL forum software though.

Yep that's it. I got a better one last night. Will post it later.

How did you make your moving image on the top post mate please? When Icvreate an animated GIF the forum will not play it (nor will many other webistes). I captured six images of JWST and want to make an animated mage like yours.

^^^Hope you are right guys, it makes sense what you say. I've captured it again this evening. Will share tomorrow.

...hmmm, they said they had the day off today. Webb Sunshield Tensioning To Begin Tomorrow – James Webb Space Telescope (nasa.gov) That makes me thing have they hit a problem and want more time???? There was never any talk of days off in the middle of this critical deployment. What do you think?

They said it would take two days to tension all of the membranes so we should hopefully find out tomorrow, as you say. Fingers crossed!

Here was my capture of it with TEC140 and Atik 460 on 29th December. Coordinates from the JPL Horizons Ephemeris tool and I am acquainted well with this tool and have captured other stuff like asteroids from it. It is 100% the JWST. This video also in the JWST terror thread. JWST.mp4.f7caeb8a72d069e0f84971b3be08b3cd.mp4

It would be easier if you registered the frames before making the video. That's what I did on my capture of JWST. Yes it will be getting fainter and fainter. I am not sure what the magnitude of it will be at L2. Long exposures would be needed I imagine.

The reason given by NASA is that such cameras and their required wiring would add too much extra launch mass to a system already at the limit of what Ariane was capable of when the decision was made. Every few grammes of weight is critical. Also the additional software needed to control the cameras, adding further complications to an already incredibly sophisticated and expensive system hardware and software. There are a ton of other sensors and they can infer what they need to know to work around a problem from those. That is the NASA official answer to that question which has been asked of them a load of times. It would have been great to see stuff going on.