James Webb Space Telescope Concepts

The Mission: A True Story

by David W. Brown · 26 Jan 2021

job as director of Goddard Space Flight Center, a lateral move that placed him closer to his beloved Hubble and its successor in development: the James Webb Space Telescope.135 The Mars milestones, meanwhile, didn’t stop. In 2005 the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launched from Cape Canaveral with a mandate to map Mars in

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support so effectively the great telescopes of the twentieth century—the Very Large Array, Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra—and the cornerstone of the twenty-first, the James Webb Space Telescope, which, in addition to luring Ed Weiler to Goddard Space Flight Center, had by 2006 nonupled in price, five hundred million to four-point-five

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on its back: a beleaguered bureaucracy bereft of innovation, inattentive to researchers, and flying far fewer missions than it could. The cause: cost overruns. The James Webb Space Telescope, which would succeed Hubble, was proposed as a low-cost five-hundred-million-dollar project, leveraging technology developed during the Strategic Defense Initiative.187, 188

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Congress the Orion crew vehicle and the Ares V heavy-lift rocket.397 In exchange, the administration would get money for general technology development, the James Webb Space Telescope, and a robust “commercial crew” program—that is: the private sector would one day take over all launches to low Earth orbit. The smaller Ares

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information, another mission study, another consult, another talk, another news article speeding across the wire, the decaying budgets of planetary science, Mars rovers and the James Webb Space Telescope gobbling everything green, AND WHERE WAS BOB’S SPACESHIP? He kept taking these leaps, and it was—what if he landed and just . . . kept landing

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-blank which stood where.447 Earth science came first; under this administration, climate change would not be ignored. Second came astrophysics, but more specifically, the James Webb Space Telescope—successor space observatory to Hubble and billions of dollars in the red. It was being built in Maryland and thus represented by Barbara Mikulski, who

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Program Management Challenges (Washington, DC: NASA Office of Inspector General, June 14, 2018), 1, https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/CT-18-002.pdf. See also James Webb Space Telescope Independent Comprehensive Review Panel Final Report (JPL D-67250) (Pasadena, CA: JPL, CIT, October 29, 2010), 30, https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science

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’s 15-year expected lifetime.” So: $2.1 billion in 1990 dollars, when the telescope launched. But a 2010 independent comprehensive review panel for the James Webb Space Telescope claimed that Hubble cost $2.8 billion (after adjustment to 1990 dollars) without its costs broken into various elements. A 2018 NASA inspector general report

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System: An Integrated Exploration Strategy (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2003), 318, https://doi.org/10.17226/10432. 140.The Next Great Observatory: Assessing the James Webb Space Telescope—Full Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Space, December 6, 2011, video, 1:43.57, https://science.house.gov/news/videos/watch/the

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-next-great-observatory-assessing-the-james-webb-space-telescope-full-committee. 141.J. K. Alexander, Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership (Washington, DC: NASA, Office of Communications, NASA History Division, 2017), 89

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of a New Technology Orbital Telescope (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 1995), vii, https://doi.org/10.17226/9295. 189.U.S. Government Accountability Office, James Webb Space Telescope: Actions Needed to Improve Cost Estimate and Oversight of Test and Integration, Report to Congressional Committees (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, December 3

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to Planetary Geomorphology (Greeley), 319–320 Io discovery of, 22–23 geology of, 23, 25, 26, 339 orbit of, 25 proposed flybys, 253, 257, 278 James Webb Space Telescope, 82, 84, 134, 304, 329–330 Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). See also specific missions and spacecrafts APL partnership, 203–205, 346 background, 12–13 campus

The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World

by Simon Winchester · 7 May 2018 · 449pp · 129,511 words

. Oskay, www.evilmadscientist.com) Chart showing progress from Intel 4004 to Skylake (courtesy of Max Roser/Creative Commons BY-SA-2.0) Main mirror for James Webb Space Telescope Aerial view of LIGO Hanford Observatory LIGO test mass (courtesy of Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab) Seiko Building with clock in Ginza (courtesy of Oleksiy Maksymenko

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for various manufacturing processes, and while one might suppose that the clean room at the Goddard Space Center in Maryland, where NASA engineers assembled the James Webb Space Telescope, was clean, it was in fact clean only up to a standard known as ISO number 7, which allows there to be 352,000 half

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efficiency and utility of the chip and of the computer or other device at the heart of which it lies. The main mirror for the James Webb Space Telescope. At more than twenty-four feet in diameter, it will, from its location a million miles from Earth, vastly increase our ability to peer into

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at the other ends of this topsy-turvydom of extremes. It has value when it comes to the examining of the faraway—as with the James Webb Space Telescope, precisely honed to gaze into the edge of the universe. It has use and validity, too, in the examination of the big cosmological questions that

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gratitude for the valuable advice of Professor Masanori Kunieda at the University of Tokyo. NASA scientists and other colleagues involved in both the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes were most helpful, including Mark Clampin and Lee Feinberg at the Goddard Space Flight Center, as well as Eric Chaisson at Harvard and Matt Mountain

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–52 Wilkinson’s cylinder-boring technique for, 42–44, 49–52, 304–6 Iron Bridge of Coalbrookdale, 41 Ito, Tsutomi, 321–22 Jacula Prudentum, 244n James Webb Space Telescope, 231n, 294, 295, 299 Janety, Marc Étienne, 336, 337 Japan, 308–29 bamboo objects handcrafted in, 325, 326 fondness for handcrafting in, 308, 309–10

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’s manufacture of, 94–97, 98 Myrmidon, HMS, 73 Napier, 144 Napoleon Bonaparte, 66, 73 Nartov, Andrey, 65 NASA: four in-space observatories of, 232n James Webb Space Telescope, 231n, 294, 295, 299 Pioneer 10 space probe, 289 uncertain future for, after Challenger explosion and Hubble failure, 236 see also Hubble Space Telescope Nasmyth

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in, 315, 316 Talleyrand, Prince of, 333–34, 348 target, shooting with precision vs. accuracy, 14–16, 15 taxation of vehicles, 147–48 telescopes, 222 James Webb Space Telescope, 231n, 294, 295, 299 see also Hubble Space Telescope temperature: bimetallic strips and changes in, 33–34 kelvin as unit of, 346 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord

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, and a leading authority on meteorites. * NASA has now all but completed a vastly more powerful (and at eight billion dollars, much costlier) device, the James Webb Space Telescope, which is due to be launched from the European spaceport in French Guiana, in April 2019. The telescope will float almost a million miles from

Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military

by Neil Degrasse Tyson and Avis Lang · 10 Sep 2018 · 745pp · 207,187 words

; cyber; command, control, communications and computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR); strike; and logistics and modernization”—it is also the prime contractor for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a state-of-the-art, state-of-the-science infrared observatory designed to orbit the Sun a million miles from Earth as, alongside other goals

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’s FY2019 budget request completely eliminates funding for WFIRST, on the grounds that “developing another large space telescope immediately after completing the $8.8-billion James Webb Space Telescope is not a priority for the administration.”39 Let’s put that in context. For many years, NASA’s budget—covering all ten NASA centers

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outcry from the general public was greater than that from the scientists. Congress relented, and the mission was reinstated. Hubble’s successor, the infrared-tuned James Webb Space Telescope, has, as far as we know, no military doppelgängers—yet. 7 MAKING WAR, SEEKING PEACE Space is a physics battleground. Gigantic magnetic fields loop through

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affordable once the optics required for the “next-generation space telescope” had been mastered. Today’s real-life next-generation space telescope, the seven-ton James Webb Space Telescope, has a 6.5-meter gold-coated mirror made up of eighteen separate hexagonal segments constructed from pure beryllium, a metal that’s both strong

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ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance), 157–59, 204 ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations), 374, 375, 376 It Can’t Happen Here (Lewis), 274, 315 James Webb Space Telescope, 23, 232, 233, 246–47, 533n jamming, 260, 333, 515n, 516n Jansky, Karl, 178–79, 180, 463n Japan Christianity banned in, 111 education and life

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missile and nuclear programs, 253, 299, 310, 356, 530n Northrop Grumman B-2 stealth bombers, 198, 303, 470n campaign contributions, 412n in Colorado Springs, 16 James Webb Space Telescope, 23 military-related projects and sales, 18, 23 overview, 22–23 prosperity after September 11, 2001, 11, 12 Starshade screen, 21 Nostradamus, 53, 59, 428

The Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility

by Robert Zubrin · 30 Apr 2019 · 452pp · 126,310 words

-space-telescope-will-find-thousands-planets-astronomers-seek-select-few-180970411/ (accessed October 22, 2018); Elizabeth Howell, “NASA's James Webb Space Telescope: Hubble's Cosmic Successor,” Space, July 17, 2018, https://www.space.com/21925-james-webb-space-telescope-jwst.html (accessed October 22, 2018). 3. Alison Klesman, “Where Does WFIRST Stand Now?” Astronomy, May 31, 2018

Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars

by Lee Billings · 2 Oct 2013 · 326pp · 97,089 words

, even more revolutionary observatory would take its place. Hubble’s successor was announced in 1996 as the Next Generation Space Telescope before being renamed the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2002 in honor of the NASA administrator who had guided the agency in the glory days of Apollo. Its mission would be to

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. First we’ll be able to look at some transiting super-Earths around nearby, quiet M-dwarfs, the ones with puffy, extended atmospheres that [the James Webb Space Telescope] and maybe even telescopes on the ground will be able to probe. But after that we won’t have infinite chances to find our Earth

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–83 interferometry, 213–14, 216, 231 International Space Station (ISS), 187, 189, 197, 202, 207–8, 210 interstellar travel, 44–45, 100–101 iron, 141 James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), 193–99, 202–4, 209, 215, 216, 218, 220, 225, 262 Jensen-Clem, Becky, 259 Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), 211–12, 216, 219, 221

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, 209 Hubble Space Telescope, 189–93, 195, 197–99, 205–7, 209, 218–19, 226 International Space Station, 187, 189, 197, 202, 207–8, 210 James Webb Space Telescope, 193–99, 202–4, 209, 215, 216, 218, 220, 225, 262 Kepler Space Telescope, 13–14, 53–54, 56, 62, 71–73, 98, 108–9

Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier

by Neil Degrasse Tyson and Avis Lang · 27 Feb 2012 · 476pp · 118,381 words

searches for the most distant gamma-ray outbursts in the universe. Meanwhile, the Hubble Space Telescope will continue to work until its larger successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, reaches orbit, peering farther than any previous telescope as it chronicles the formation of galaxies and the large-scale structures they trace. Enlightened by our

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serviced one last time. Of course, nothing lasts forever—nothing except, perhaps, the universe itself. So Hubble eventually will die. But in the meantime, the James Webb Space Telescope beckons, designed to see deeper into the universe than Hubble ever could. When launched, funding permitting, it will allow us to plumb the depths of

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of unstable equilibrium for nearly a century, long beyond its useful life as a data-taking space probe. NASA’s next-generation space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (successor to the Hubble), is also being designed for the Sun–Earth L2 point. And there’s plenty of room for yet more satellites to

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), 5 Io, 169 ion-thruster engines, 164 Iran, xiv, 23 Islam, 206 “island universes,” 98–100 Israel, 23 Italy, xiv, 7, 72 Jackson, Michael, 203 James Webb Space Telescope, 139, 143, 176 Jansky, Karl, 90–91 Japan, xiv, 7, 22, 168, 215 atomic bombing of, 50, 95–96 Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), 167

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, 92, 129 comets and, 48 extraterrestrial life and, 39–40 on Mars, 48, 134, 138, 201, 227 molecules of, 258 Webb, James, 67 see also James Webb Space Telescope weightlessness, 119 Weinberg, Steven, 10, 81 “What Are We Waiting For?” (Collier’s), 111 White, Edward B., 66 Wilkins, John, 21 Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe

Interplanetary Robots

by Rod Pyle

program have not identified anything they consider to be a deal breaker, to use their own term. In a few years, NASA will launch the James Webb Space Telescope, the first optical instrument capable of limited imaging of worlds circling other stars. It will join the recently launched TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite

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infrared spectrometer in the bit, so it can examine the borehole as it drills. Original plans included NASA in the effort, but the ever-hungry James Webb Space Telescope budget consumed the funds previously allocated for this, and NASA was forced to pull out of the partnership. Landing sites are still under discussion, and

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surface properties. Instrumentation includes cameras, spectrometers, and a surface-penetrating radar that would peer up to six miles below the ice surrounding these worlds.4 James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): While not a planetary probe per se, the JWST is a giant space telescope slated to launch in 2021. The sectional mirror will unfold

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. “Europa Clipper,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory, https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper/. 4. “JUICE,” ESA, http://sci.esa.int/juice/. 5. Rob Garner, ed., “James Webb Space Telescope,” NASA, last updated June 27, 2018, https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/webb/main/index.html. 6. Tricia Talbert, ed., “Double Asteroid Redirected Test (DART

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Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), 319 missions to Mercury, 321–22 Evans, Nancy, 58 ExoMars rover (Exobiology on Mars), 140, 233, 318, 320 exoplanets discoveries, 217 James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), 320 Project Longshot and, 222 See also interstellar space Exoplanet Survey Satellite, 220 Explorer 1 (satellite), 43, 106, 107 extrasolar planets, 220 extremophiles, 126

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, 231 Io (moon of Jupiter), 194–95, 258, 260–61 Ip, Wing-Huen, 278 Italian Space Agency, 280 IUS stage, 242, 247 Jain, Naveen, 94 James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), 220, 318, 319–20 Japan, 94, 324 Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), 156, 322, 324 Jet-Assisted Takeoff (JATO), 106 Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), 17

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), 244 Team Hakuto (Japan), 94, 95 TeamIndus (India), 94 telescopes Galileo observing Saturn's rings through, 284 Hubble Space Telescope, 206–207, 255, 263, 320 James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), 220, 318, 319–20 Lunokhods, 91 Mount Palomar, of Mars, 66, 66, 126 observations of Mars, 70 for Venus/Mars flyby, 160–61 Teller

First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time

by Emma Chapman · 23 Feb 2021 · 265pp · 79,944 words

about parsnip portions because the responsibility lies with me. I don’t understand, then, how people shoulder the responsibility of modern space missions. Take the James Webb Space Telescope,1 known as JWST. Conceived in 1996, the mission will launch at the earliest in Summer 2021, at a cost of $9 billion.1 The

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culinary worship of the Mary Berry cookbook, those behind JWST are rather more avant-garde in the kitchen, creating delectable dishes on the fly. The James Webb Space Telescope The telescope itself reminds me of an old Transformers toy you found under the tree on Christmas morning, or perhaps an origami swan napkin on

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come a long way in our search for the first stars. We have looked near, using stellar archaeology, and far, preparing to push even the James Webb Space Telescope to its limits. As we wait for further success from these fields, we can continue looking for evidence similar to the EDGES result. There, the

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. Chapter 9: The Cosmic Dusk 1 www.jwst.nasa.gov. 2 www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTxLAGchWnA. 3 www.theverge.com/2018/8/1/17627560/james-webb-space-telescope-cost-estimate-nasa-northrop-grumman. 4 Surace, M. et al. On the detection of supermassive primordial stars – II. Blue supergiants. Monthly Notices of the Royal

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, here, here, here, here ionosphere here, here, here, here iron here, here, here, here, here see also metal-poor stars ironstones here isotopes here, here James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) here, here, here, here Japan Fukushima disaster here Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings here Naha tug-of-war here, here Jeans, Sir James Hopwood here

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process of colliding and merging In the Antennae galaxies, a violent merger has ignited fresh rounds of star formation. An artist’s impression of the James Webb Space Telescope. The Aperture Array Verification System, the testbed for potential SKA technology, with the Milky Way overhead. Here, I am very proud of a LOFAR station

Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions

by Temple Grandin, Ph.d. · 11 Oct 2022

would have visualized the effect of the shaking and designed fasteners that would have withstood liftoff. As of this writing, after months of calibration, the James Webb Space Telescope was sending back wondrous photos of galaxies from the farthest reaches of the universe. * * * When I was in college, researchers had to do many of

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): 64–71. Glantz, J., et al. “Jet’s Software Was Updated, Pilots Weren’t.” New York Times, February 3, 2019, 1, 18. “The Great, Late James Webb Space Telescope.” Economist, November 27, 2021, 76–78. Greene-Blose, J. M. “Deepwater Horizon: Lessons in Probabilities.” Paper presented at PMI Global Congress 2015—EMEA, London. Newton

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Low-pressure Natural Gas Distribution System [September 13, 2018].” October 11, 2018. Niler, E. “NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Plagued by Delays, Rising Costs.” Wired, June 27, 2018. https://www.wired.com/story/delays-rising-costs-plague-nasas-james-webb-space-telescope/. Norman, C. “Chernobyl: Errors and Design Flaws.” Science 233, no. 4768 (September 5, 1986): 1029

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, 2020, 50–53. US Department of Labor. “Number and Rate of Fatal Work Injuries, by Industry Sector,” 2018. stats.bls.gov. US Government Accountability Office. “James Webb Space Telescope: Integration and Test Challenges Have Delayed Launch and Threaten to Push Costs over Cap.” GAO Highlights 18-273 (2018), a report to Congressional Committee. US

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Iversen, Steffen M., 74–75 Ivey Business School, 105 Ivy League schools, 73, 109. See also specific names IvyWise, 73 J Jacob, Brian A., 110 James Webb Space Telescope, 197 James, William, 242 Japan, 6, 21, 26–27, 94, 223–27, 239 JBS Foods, 114, 227–28 Jenney, William Le Baron, 134–35, 138

Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life Beyond Our Solar System

by Ray Jayawardhana · 3 Feb 2011 · 257pp · 66,480 words

, while also studying a variety of other astronomical objects—from star-forming clouds in our cosmic backyard to newborn galaxies in the distant universe. The James Webb Space Telescope, a 6.5-meter successor to Hubble operating at near-and mid-infrared portions of the spectrum, is the next big thing on the horizon

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improve the suppression of starlight while revealing extremely faint companions in the surrounding area. Co-ronagraphs will also be used for planet imaging with the James Webb Space Telescope, the 6.5-meter successor to Hubble, scheduled for launch in 2014. Even with these instruments, we will be limited to imaging giant planets, mostly

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a decade to start the search for extrasolar life,” Jura argued. Our prospects of detecting biosignatures will improve somewhat with the launch of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled for 2014 (see chapter 7). In principle, it will be capable of looking for imprints of various molecules—like oxygen, ozone, water, and

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, 233; infrared, 170; optical, 169–70 Io, 184 iodine, 59 isolated planetary mass object. See planetary mass object isotopes, 233 Jacob, Capt. W. S., 49 James Webb Space Telescope, 121, 165, 225 Jeans, James, 6, 21 Jewett, David, 125 Johansen, Anders, 30 Johnson, John, 92 Jupiter, 50–51, 123; building blocks of, 42; Great

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-meter, 158; Gemini North, 38; Gemini South, 165; Hobby-Eberly Telescope, 117; Hooker 100-inch, 169; Hubble Space Telescope, 26–28, 113, 116–17, 162; James Webb Space Telescope, 121, 165, 225; JB radio dish (76 meter), 60; Keck, 83, 109, 132, 138, 140–42, 171; Large Binocular Telescope, 171; LO 3-meter, 59