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All coming up right now on Alabama STEM Explorers.

Welcome to Alabama.

STEM explorers.

I'm right.

And I'm here at the Intuitive Planetarium with my new friend David.

It is so good to see you.

Thank you for being here today.

Thank you for having me.

Absolutely.

I want to just jump right in and ask you, were you familiar with the new space telescope that we just launched into space in the last year or so I was in?

Tell me more.

Well, the James Webb Space Telescope is a huge engineering and scientific endeavor that has been in the works for many years, is finally now in space, and has sent us back all sorts of data in the form of a lot of things, including beautiful images of the cosmos.

And I wanted to show you a little bit more today, if that sounds good to you.

Yes, it does.

Please do.

Okay.

Sounds good.

Well, let's jump right in.

I think first, it's really neat if we take a look at where this space telescope is in space, because, you know, a lot of people know about the Hubble space telescope.

Right.

That has really transformed the way we understand the universe around us, both in terms of just our sheer knowledge, but also the just esthetic beauty.

Right.

Space is so, so, so pretty.

It is really, really.

So Hubble is actually pretty close to the earth, only about 250 miles away.

So that sounds like a lot, but really not really in the grand scheme of things.

That's like here in Huntsville to the beach in the Gulf, you know, so not that far, but the James Webb Space Telescope is much, much, much farther still.

It's actually about a million miles away from the earth.

That's actually further away than the moon.

That's really far.

So the reason that it's really far away is because we're trying to keep it very, very cool and that so that it can see even further into space than we've ever seen before.

So the James Webb Space Telescope is again about a million miles away from the earth.

And it's quite big this sunshield that you can see, which is that kind of the bottom five layers in there that keeps it a lot cooler from any light coming from the sun or even other stars or or energy that's radiating away like warmth, rating radiating away from the earth, the moon or anything like that.

So intense heat, it is even small amounts of that can heat up these instruments so that they're not getting the right kind of reading that we want.

And so this huge sunshield, which is about the size of a tennis court, helps keep this telescope's sensors almost as cold as is humanly physically possible in space.

That's close to absolute zero.

That's as cold as things can be.

Wow.

So very chilly.

Very, very cold.

Very, very cold.

So we also have this enormous mirror that you can actually see, which is a little bit weird to do.

You know what the Hubble looks like?

No, I don't.

Here, let me let me show you.

Really quickly.

So the Hubble Space Telescope is a little bit more like what maybe a telescope in your backyard might look like, right?

In that it's got this long tube, the light comes into it and bounces off of a primary mirror to a secondary mr and then to a basically a detector.

But it's shrouded in this tube, like most telescopes that you've seen before.

But the James Webb Space Telescope has this open mirror.

And the reason for this is because we're trying to keep things so, so, so cold that any light that might have bounced into that tube and heating it up just a little bit can actually interfere with our detections.

So we can't have anything around it because it can trap even the littlest amount of heat.

Yeah.

Weird, right?

Yeah, that is weird.

So one of the things that's interesting about this is it actually increases the risk of getting impacts by little space debris.

Little tiny micrometeorite impacts.

And a few of these have actually already impacted the telescope but haven't affected it enough that it is throwing off any of its readings yet so far.

So do you have a do you have a gauge of how big Hubble is?

So it's actually pretty big.

I mean, from the screen, it looks really big.

It definitely is big.

And our our huge screen here in the in to the planetarium definitely makes things look large, but it's way bigger than even you see on the screen.

This this telescope is about the size of a bus or so, whereas James Webb, again, is about the size of perhaps a tennis court.

So you're looking at about an eight foot diameter mirror for Hubble and about a 21 foot diameter mirror for James Webb.

So do you want to go look at a picture?

Yes.

Awesome.

Do you like galaxies?

Yes.

I would love to look galaxies.

I am a big fan.

So when James Webb released its first picture in July of 2022, everyone was on the edge of their seats and was really excited to see what they what they show off.

And they picked this picture that I'm going to show right now.

But what I think is a really neat way to see this is by zooming into the sky to see how tiny a region of space this is and give you an idea of just how far back the James Webb Space Telescope can see.

So are you ready for this?

Yes.

What we're going to do is point the telescope to this region of space and then zoom in on it.

And this image is called smacs0723.

Unwieldy.

I know same complex name we we nicknamed it smacks because it kind of smacks you in the face.

It's in the acronym.

And what we're looking at here on the screen is an infrared view of the entire sky.

Infrared is a type of light that is not something that our eyes can see.

So if you think about like night vision goggles, it's a similar kind of wavelength of light.

And so since the James Webb Space Telescope is sensitive to these infrared wavelengths of light, we are comparing against different, different telescopes that have looked at similar wavelengths.

So as we keep zooming further and further and further into the sky, you can see this little tiny region full of galaxies that James Webb observed, and we can make it a little bit bigger for you.

That's just a tiny little region, just a tiny little speck, I think, like extending a grain of sand at arm's length against the the background sky and looking up.

And that's what we're looking at.

And how many galaxies is that?

I don't even know how many galaxies are in here.

There's so, so many.

So each individual thing that you're looking at in here that doesn't have these little sort of spiky prongs can be why these are diffraction spikes, those diffraction iked objects.

Those are all stars that are photobombing kind of in front of these galaxies, but the rest are galaxies.

And these galaxies are super, super, far away and they're super, super old.

So if you see this kind of like fuzzy patch in the center, that's really bright and white.

Those are galaxies is a galaxy cluster in the foreground that's like 4.6 billion light years away from us.

Wow.

That is.

And that's the the newest galaxy in here.

But all these galaxies are older and farther away than that.

Can you find the oldest galaxy in here?

I don't know how to even try that.

And that's a great question.

So actually, the older the light from these galaxies, the redder it's going to be.

Okay.

And that's something that we call redshift.

And so because the universe is expanding and it's doing so at an accelerating rate, wavelengths of light that are coming towards us actually get redder as they get elongated.

So the redder the light is, the older the galaxy is.

So basically you're looking for something really tiny and really red.

I think I think you're pointing I think you're pointing in the right spot.

Good work.

Good work.

It's a really small but very red is a really small but very red.

And it's something that we hadn't ever seen before.

The James Webb Space Telescope was able to look at this patch of space.

So what's what's really neat about that is when we look at light from that super old galaxy, it's 13.1 billion years old.

That's older than the earth, right?

Older than the earth by a long shot.

That's almost as old as the universe.

So very, very old light that we're able to see.

Wow.

But this is just one snapshot from James Webb.

And it's a nice example of one of the main mission objectives.

The first mission objective of James Webb, which is to better understand the early universe.

So maybe next, let's take a look at galaxies that change over time.

Have you ever seen a galaxy collide with another one?

No, I haven't.

I'll take a look at this.

I would love to.

So what we're seeing right here is actually not imagery or data from the James Webb Space Telescope, but rather this is a computer simulation that has been visualized in our dome, to give you a sense of a much, much, much sped up process of these two galaxies colliding, definitely collided.

They did.

And they're about to do it again, as you'll see here.

So galaxy collisions are super hard for us to observe becawe can't sit down and just like watch the whole thing happen.

Right.

Because these processes take tens of millions to hundreds of millions of perhaps even a billion years.

A long time.

Right.

You don't have time to sit around and know and watch that.

So what we do is we look at different galaxies in the process of colliding at different phases of their lives and can see those accordingly.

So maybe a good example would be to take a look at another one of the very first pictures that was released by the James Webb Space Telescope, also in July of 20, 2022.

And that is a region of space called Stephan's Quintet.

So here's a quick look at Stephan's quintet as viewed by the Hubble Space Telescope.

So quintet means five.

So we have five galaxies that are pretty close together in this region of space.

Four of them are gravitationally interacting.

They're colliding and kind of moving around each other.

But the fifth one is actually much closer towards us.

Any any guesses as to which one is the closest galaxy?

And I'll give you a hint.

Remember, things that are older away, look a little bit more, read more red.

Also have hints of red on them.

But I hope the red is might see that one.

Yeah.

So that's that's probably the reddest one and the bluest one.

So probably the closest one.

That one right there.

So while Red doesn't necessarily just mean old by itself, it does mean older stars, cooler stars.

When we can see these discrete stars and in this foreground galaxy, you can actually see a lot of these bluer stars that are young and hot.

And we can actually resolve unique stars in this picture from Hubble.

But I want to compare the James Webb version to this as well, which I think is strikingly beautiful in sort of a different way, because when Hubble looks at wavelengths of light that our eyes can see visible light and James Webb looks at light, that is infrared that our eyes can't see.

Infrared light lets you peer through some of the gas and and dust in these galaxies so that you can see some of the galactic structure a little bit better.

Next up, let's take a look at some different worlds.

What's your favorite planet, Jupiter?

Definitely.

Oh, man.

It's just so big, so gassy, so strange, you know?

Okay.

Let's let's take a quick look at that.

And I think a real a real highlight from Jupiter is that our friend James Webb viewing Jupiter is that with infrared light, we're able to get a very unique view.

Right.

You're used to Jupiter being kind of kind of tan.

Little shades of orange.

It was never blue was when I looked at it.

And it's got that great red spot.

Right.

But here it isn't.

It's a white.

It's like, weird.

So what we're seeing here is a unique look at the structure of Jupiter's atmosphere that we weren't able to see in the same wavelength of light with Hubble.

And so one of the mission objectives for other worlds of James Webb is to look at, you know, pictures of planets in our own solar system, pictures like Jupiter.

And it's also, though, supposed to give us a look at what planets lie beyond our solar system.

Yeah.

So these are things called exoplanets.

These are planets that orbit on their stars, not named sun.

So any guesses as to how many exoplanets we've discovered so far?

Roughly, roughly if I would have to guess Small number.

Small number.

Well, I don't know what your your idea of small number is.

So let me give you a hint.

Every single little pointer here that you see is an exoplanet that we've discovered in space.

I'm always surprised by how big the universe and space is like.

My estimations are always off when it comes to space.

Like this is.

This is an incredibly cool job to have, especially just being in the space industry.

Absolutely.

It's really it's really a vibrant time to be in astronomy because with things like James Webb and so many other missions and telescopes out there, there are so many advances rapidly being made.

And our understanding is getting pushed bigger and bigger and bigger all the time.

So we've now found over 5000 unique planets orbiting other stars.

Amazing.

All right.

Amazing.

Let me let me fly to a planet really fast when the ones that's it's observed.

That's called WASP 96 P and a fly by way of the earth.

That's always painful as we fly the wasp at 96 B, wasp 96 B is kind of a Jupiter like planet or more like a Saturn like planet, and it's what we would call a hot Saturn.

So this thing is about a quarter of the mass of Jupiter and maybe a touch bigger than Jupiter in terms of diameter.

And this is super, super close.

It's super, super hot.

And as a result, we want to know a little bit more about it's atmosphere and the way that James Webb does.

This isn't pretty.

Exactly.

It's not like this beautiful picture like what we're seeing here is actually just an artist's simulation of what they think that this world might look like.

It probably looks nothing like this.

We just know it's gassy.

Kind of like Jupiter in some way.

So what we can see instead is the fingerprint of light from this.

And we call that a spectrum.

And so by using some of these instruments onboard the James Webb Space Telescope, we can tease apart this fingerprint of light and figure out what different chemicals, elements, molecules, etc.

are inside of this atmosphere.

We can figure out its composition.

And so, again, that doesn't look super pretty, but we're able to figure out that there's water in here, there's carbon monoxide, there's sulfur dioxide, etc.. And this gives us some ideas as to whether you would have a fun time living here, which you wouldn't.

But, you know, as we search for life beyond the earth, this is probably not going to find us life.

That would be very unlikely.

But it at least tells us a better idea if something could live in some of these places.

And again, how Jupiter.

Not so great, but maybe not.

Maybe an Earth like planet, right?

Could.

Could be okay.

I don't know.

So that's sort of neat.

So maybe something else, too, to give you an idea of, like, how do we figure this out?

Because confusing.

Right.

And confusing.

So let's let's try this.

So first off, we are able to detect planets that are in orbit around another star by a variety of different methods.

But maybe the primary one is called the transit method.

Okay.

So what do you what do you see happening here?

I see some things orbiting what I think are perhaps those planets or yes, we've got a star and then we have a star kind of with red light on this side.

Green light.

Blue light, yeah.

Okay, now we've got this dark thing that moves in front of it.

And watch what happens to this graph right as the planet moves in front of it.

There are definitely different like the lines aren't exactly the same.

So there's definitely not exactly.

So as as the planet moves in front of the star, you end up with dimming a little bit, just a little bit of that light gets blocked by the planet in front of it.

So that's like, you know, there's lights in front of your face right now.

If I move my hand in front, right your face gets a little bit darker.

So when we're looking at this really faint light of these other stars, we can see a little bit of that dimming.

But in the process of seeing that dimming, we can see if it blue is a little bit darker, if green is a little bit darker, if red is a little bit darker, or any other colors or colors that our eyes can't even detect.

And in doing that, we can kind of, again, tease apart that fingerprint of light, so to speak, to figure out what is inside of the atmosphere of this planet.

Does that make sense?

Well, a little bit.

A little bit.

Starting to get the idea.

But again, so this is this is our attempt to explore other worlds with James Webb.

And there's still one last category.

So I want to show you two, two main things, and we'll just make these really big, because I think that's awesome.

The last mission objective is to better understand the stellar life cycle.

So star birth to star death.

But I want to go in the opposite direction.

This is star death in spectacular fashion.

This is called the Southern Ring Nebula.

And what we're looking at is the result of a star that's about the same size as the sun, that is older than the sun and is kind of ending its life in very spectacular fashion, billowing off all this gas.

And as this gas is sort of around the star in space, remnant energy from the star ionized is this gas and means it sort of energizes it and it causes it to glow.

And I just think it's really beautiful, right?

Beautiful.

Like the colors just just really pop and give us a sense of the delicate nature of what we're looking at, but also like the violent nature of it.

I mean, this is a star that's kind of at the at the end of its demise here.

So this is not a supernova.

This is what we call a planetary nebula.

So it's not like an explosion.

It's kind of a slower process, but better, better studying things like this.

Help us to understand what the future for our sun is now.

You don't have to worry because the sun still has quite a long time to live out its life.

And we're probably looking at another four and a half, 5 billion years or so.

A long, long time.

Yeah.

So don't hold your breath.

But but, you know, an interesting process nonetheless.

This is a view actually in a different wavelength of infrared using a different instrument on board.

James Webb.

So this is looking at more infrared light.

This is mid-infrared as opposed to near infrared for the first time.

So what has your favorite image been from the James Webb?

Oh, my goodness.

That's a hard a hard question to answer.

And, you know, I think hav all of these new pictures continually being released makes it an ever changing question.

But currently currently currently my favorite picture from the James Webb Space Telescope is of the iconic region of the pillars of creation.

But let me let me build this up for you, because first, you know, Hubble is really this this telescope that opened the public's eyes to the wonders of the universe.

Like visible, right?

Yeah.

And this began this iconic picture of the pillars of creation.

This is what Hubble released in 1995, and everyone was spellbound.

These are these tall towers, light years long, where new stars are being born.

And then later on, several years later, Hubble revisited.

This picture took a more wide field view.

And how did it self right.

It's very much bigger.

And you can see a lot more.

A lot, a lot more.

And then James Webb just this past year looked at the same spot and released this.

Wow.

And look at all the stars.

So vibrant, so vibrant.

So as James Webb can peer through these various pillars, these star forming regions, we're able to see star birth in its infancy and better understand how stars begin in the first place.

And then that helps us die.

How they die, exactly how they how they begin, how they end.

And we can fill in that part in between.

And it gives us a look at that entire cycle and better understand just stars in general it's really a very beautiful thing is.

Thank you so much for having me here, David.

It was just amazing and I learned so much and it's really beautiful here in this intuitive planetarium.

Thank you so much for joining me.

And I'd like to invite you and anyone else to join us here in the into the planetarium at the US Space and Rocket Center and explore more imagery from the James Webb Space Telescope at our show.

James Webb Space Telescope.

The story unfolds and we have different interactive tools that let you explore all this amazing imagery in context of the sky on your phone, on your computer or any other device you have that connects to the Internet.

We'll see you next time on Alabama Explorers.

Thanks for watching.

Alabama STEM Explorers.

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Thanks again for watching.

We'll be back next week.

Alabama STEM Explorers is made possible by the generous support of the Holle Family Foundation, established to honor the legacy of Brigadier General Everett Holle and his parents, Evelyn and Fred Holle.

Champions of Servant Leadership.