Imagine for a moment that you have some gadget at home that allows you to see, in real time, what life was like in the twentieth century. What do I say, with the magic tool you can observe events from much older times. Perhaps we could learn how the pyramids of Egypt were built, how the stones of Stonehenge were placed, find the tomb of Cleopatra and even the car keys.
This tool exists. It is not in their homes, but millions of miles above our heads. The James Webb Telescope it will see how light was born in the universe and it will show us stars and galaxies as they were billions of years ago. It is the most powerful (and expensive) telescope in history. Among other achievements, he managed to take off on December 25, a public holiday.
To look deeply into space is to look back in time. The James Webb may analyze in detail lregions with young galaxies less than 5 billion years old. The telescope will be able to explore the region that emitted the first light in the universe, just 100 million years after the Big Bang. What was the universe like in its origin? What were the first Galaxies like? James will look out into space and back in time to find out.
It has solar panels, radiators and a 6.5 meter diameter mirror made up of 18 gold-plated hexagons, among other elements. In order to catch the first light, the Webb will have to stay very cold, 233 degrees below zero, as any source of heat would prevent you from picking up dim and distant lights. Many want to look through the telescope and investigate with it. Specifically, NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) received a total of 1172 observation proposals. “The general observer time with Webb is extremely competitive. As a result, the proposal selection process is rigorous, ”says ESA. There are only 6,000 hours of observation available. Only 266 projects have been approved.
One of them is the proposed observation of the galaxy z = 11 (also known as MACS0647-JD), led by Dan Coe, an astronomer who has already studied the most distant known galaxies using the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. In the proposal will participate Álex Benítez, a 17-year-old student first year in Physics at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), who managed to enter the project when he was still a high school student. According to relatives, it is the first time a high school student gets observing time in a space telescope. Álex participates as a co-investigator in the observation proposal and has spoken for Diario AS in order to explain a little better what is james webb, what will be its function and What is the project about in which he collaborates, which will begin in 2022.
What makes the James Webb Telescope so special?
First of all, it has a mirror three times the size of Hubble’s. It is nine times more powerful in terms of how much light it can capture. There are other things that make it special, like a cooling system that has been left to create $ 150 million and keeps the telescope at forty Kelvin (−233 ° C). This allows the same telescope not to emit infrared and not interfere with the observations. Hubble has infrared cameras, but not very good ones. The same infrared detectors are a hundred times more powerful than some of those Hubble had.
Hubble itself emits a lot of infrared, the Sun emits a lot of infrared, and the Earth emits a lot of infrared. Now that range will be observed much better, because there comes a point where you are observing galaxies that are 14 billion light years away. You couldn’t observe those galaxies with Hubble.
“You are observing galaxies that are 14 billion light years away.”
Alex Benitez
What is this telescope going to study?
You are going to study the most distant galaxies that Hubble could know of and galaxies that are even further away. I mean, we’ll see them when they were younger. You can observe galaxies when they were 400 million years old, which is extremely young in terms of the universe. We will only see the light that they emitted 13,000 million years ago, which is what reaches us.
What is the observation proposal in which you participate?
Our proposal is to observe the second farthest galaxy that we know of (MACS0647-JD), which was observed with Hubble at the time, but with Hubble it received less light because its infrared detectors were worse, so to speak, if the You compare to the James Webb. The main objective of our proposal is to be able to detect this galaxy and to be able to extract more information about it to know what the galaxies were like when they began to form. That is, we want to know how our universe began and understand why we are here. It is like pulling a rope until you finally find the reason, it is part of the process of astrophysics to find more and more information about the timeline.
On the other hand, there are many proposals to observe exoplanets because it is a subject of considerable interest. We’re talking about being able to find a planet like Earth or finding alien life, but that’s a long way off, it’s rolling the dice and unlikely to happen. It is still an interesting topic, but our proposal focuses on a galaxy.
“We want to know how our universe began and understand why we are here”
Alex Benitez
What do we know at the moment about that galaxy, about MACS0647-JD?
It is 13.3 billion light years away and is roughly like ours in terms of shape. We see it when it was a young galaxy and was in the phase of star mass formation, but almost no information about the internal structure can be extracted. Other than that not much else is known. Our goal is clear, to learn more about this galaxy.
What findings do you hope to make with the observation proposal?
What happens is that we do not know what the galaxy is. Part of the project is cataloging it, understanding exactly what it is like, and clarifying what galaxies were like when they were younger. We are going to look at some objects that we already know exist, but have not been observed in detail, but they are around the same cluster as MACS0647-JD. The light from objects behind this cluster of galaxies is amplified and you can see other objects as if they were much closer, but getting the same information from when they are so far away. They wanted to study if these objects could be observed, if they give us a little more time to be able to detect even more distant galaxies.
When does the project start?
They have given us observation time for November. So once they use the telescope to observe, they will send us the data and I will collaborate with them to process the data, find out precisely what it is that we have observed and draw conclusions. That is, they will point the telescope, take the images, send us the information, and I think this information can be filtered with the program we use.
Why were you interested in this project?
It was a contact that I was able to talk to. His name is Daniel, and he was my father’s student. I contacted him and asked him if there was anything I could do, that he knew a lot about programming and that in physics he would learn what it would take to be able to do this. For this project to get the funding to observe, they had to simulate images of the method they were going to use and simulate what the galaxy would look like when observed with the James Webb. To do these simulations you had to use a program that had been created and was not even 100 percent finished yet. Such a large program does not usually work in the first phase, so you have to check if it works and fix all the bugs.
I knew how to program at an acceptable level. Daniel told me to try using the program on my computer. The summer of fourth of ESO I basically dedicated myself to taking this program, reading it in its entirety, understanding how certain parts worked and trying to make it work. It failed me, I don’t know, five hundred times, and it was always because of a new mistake. But you were fixing it. In the end I learned a lot about how a telescope works, quite a bit of physics and programming.
“The summer of fourth of ESO I basically dedicated myself to taking this program, reading it in its entirety, understanding how it worked”
Alex Benitez
How are you going to carry out the project and what is your role within the observation proposal?
They are in charge of pointing the telescope, and they decide to some extent how we focus it. We tell them how we want it, but in the end the telescope is theirs. They take the images and send us the information, which I think can be filtered with the program we use.
Now I am one of the people who have the program for the whole time I was using it. When you observe with a telescope you receive a lot of information, you usually observe with several cameras and you get gigabytes and gigabytes of data. It’s a lot of work because you can’t do everything automatically. Someone has to go reviewing that data, and they will probably put me through the work of taking images every few seconds and checking what comes out. They also haven’t told me yet why it’s going to be in a year or so, but I think I’ll help them further process the data and draw primary conclusions.
“I’m putting a pebble in the tower of astrophysics”
Alex Benitez
What’s it like being a high school student and getting observation time at the James Webb?
I am proud to have gotten them to put me in the proposal, because in the end if you don’t deserve it, if you haven’t done work, they won’t include you in the project. They mention you, but you are not part of the proposal, which is what I am now. They have considered that you have done enough work, so I have been able to help in a proposal for one of the best telescopes that have been created in history. I’m putting a pebble in the tower of astrophysics. And as for being a high school student, that’s not a big deal either. These are things that other people could have done, perhaps. It is a matter of learning, doing a lot of extra work, that school does not come for you, but then it will help you in another way.
Now I have in mind to get good grades in the race, and in November of next year I will have the opportunity to do scientific research, and if I am lucky a scientific article will come out. But that is already little by little, right?
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