Only 3 hours and 17 minutes of astronomical darkness on Saturday evening. Not many mosquitoes yet fortunately.

Comet C2008 R1 (McNaught) is now about magnitude 7.8 and expected to brighten as it nears the Sun, may get to magnitude 2 according to some predictions. Take a look around 4:15 am.

Duration : 0:4:32

Technorati Tags: 1 Ceres, Amateur Astronomy, asteroid, Astronomy, iss, jupiter, mars, mercury, messier 8, moon, saturn, space station, venus

In this fourth episode of the Science@ESA vodcast series Rebecca Barnes will identify some of the key discoveries achieved with the famous Hubble Space Telescope, look at the concept of redshift, and meet a new telescope that will be used to uncover the early Universe.

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Named in 2002 in honour of NASA’s administrator during the Apollo programme, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) mission is a collaborative project between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

JWST will address many of the outstanding issues of modern Astronomy related to the ‘Early Universe’ and is expected to yield scientific breakthroughs as did its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. JWST will be a general-purpose observatory with a suite of astronomical infrared-sensitive instruments.

Compared to existing or planned observatories, JWST will have the unique advantage of combining superb image quality throughout a wide wavelength range, a wide field of view and unparalleled photon sensitivity due to its 6.5-metre diameter telescope primary mirror.

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=29

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a planned infrared space observatory, the partial successor to the aging Hubble Space Telescope. The JWST will not be a complete successor, because it will not be sensitive to all of the light wavelengths that Hubble can see.

The main scientific goal is to observe the most distant objects in the universe, those beyond the reach of either ground based instruments or the Hubble. The JWST project is a NASA-led international collaboration with contributors in fifteen nations, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

Originally called the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST), it was renamed in 2002 after NASA’s second administrator, James E. Webb (1906-1992). Webb had headed NASA from the beginning of the Kennedy administration through the Johnson administration (1961-68), thus overseeing all the manned launches in the Mercury through Gemini programs, until just before the first manned Apollo flight.

Current plans call for the telescope to be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket in June 2014, on a five-year mission (10 year goal). The JWST will reside in solar orbit near the Sun-Earth L2 point, which is on a line passing from the Sun to the Earth, but about 1.5 million km farther away from the Sun than is the Earth.

This position, which moves around the Sun in exact orbital synchrony with the Earth, will allow JWST to shield itself from infrared from both Sun and Earth, by using a single radiation shield positioned between the telescope and the Sun-Earth direction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope

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Duration : 0:6:42

Technorati Tags: agency, apollo, ariane, Astronomy, canadian, ESA, european, gemini, hubble, infrared, James, jwst, mercury, NASA, observatories, redshift, science, space, successor, Telescopes, universe, Webb