Why the World’s Astronomers Are Very, Very Anxious Right Now
The New York Times
The James Webb Space Telescope is endowed with the hopes and trepidations of a generation of astronomers.
What do astronomers eat for breakfast on the day that their $10 billion telescope launches into space? Their fingernails.
“You work for years and it all goes up in a puff of smoke,” said Marcia Rieke of the University of Arizona.
Dr. Rieke admits her fingers will be crossed on the morning of Dec. 22 when she tunes in for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. For 20 years, she has been working to design and build an ultrasensitive infrared camera that will live aboard the spacecraft. The Webb is the vaunted bigger and more powerful successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers expect that it will pierce a dark curtain of ignorance and supposition about the early days of the universe, and allow them to snoop on nearby exoplanets.
