In a white hall of the Leiden LUMC hospital, just behind the entrance, a visitor looks back thirteen billion years in time. The hospital’s gallery hangs large, impressive prints of space photos taken with James Webb (JWST). It is the largest space telescope ever built and was launched last Christmas. One of the photos shows galaxies that are so distant that it took light 13 billion years to reach the telescope. That means that for this image, JWST captured light sent from the galaxies just after the Big Bang. Other prints show distant nebulae and merging galaxies.
Behind one of those prints, Vincent Icke is concentrated on the final preparations for the opening of the exhibition. He is professor of theoretical astronomy at Leiden University and a visual artist. “The title of the exhibition, On the way to the beginningmy wife came up with,” he says.
Icke walks over to a scale model of JWST, about a meter wide. His eighteen hexagonal, gold mirror pieces that make up the main mirror glisten under the white lights of the hospital. “He can also move,” says Icke. The telescope had to be unfolded in space, because it only fit inside the rocket when folded. It is nice that the visitor gets to see how incredibly refined the telescope is. It took decades and nearly ten billion euros to build the colossus.
Modeling with gravity
The exhibition mixes art and science. Behind the photos of JWST are works of art by Icke. He walks to one of his works. It is a large photo of a distorted planet Saturn against a black background. Along Saturn is a row of dots, which resemble a flock of birds. “I wondered, if a galactic civilization were to traverse the universe, what their spaceships would look like. Those won’t be terrestrial missiles. They have space as a medium, just like water is for fish. I was inspired by how fish move through the water. I then calculated in a physics model what effect such a spaceship has on space, in this case on Saturn. The spaceship will exert an influence on its environment through gravity. You can call it modeling with gravity.” The combination of real space photos with strange distortions looks intriguing.
In the center of the exhibition is a small gray telescope on a white pedestal. Icke: „This was used forty years ago during practicals by astronomy students. Children can practice with it here. When they zoom in on one of JWST’s photos, it’s like looking into the universe themselves.”
The exhibition can be visited until September 28. Ewine van Dishoeck talks about the observations of JWST on 13 September. Van Dishoeck is an astronomer in Leiden.
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