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February 20, 2022 04:34 pm

How the Webb Telescope Will Explore Interstellar Objects

Astronomers have only caught glimpses of the two interstellar objects identified in our solar system, reports Space.com — but there's hope that the Webb Space Telescope will show us more:"With Webb, we can do really interesting science at much fainter magnitudes or brightnesses," Cristina Thomas, an astronomer at Northern Arizona University, said in a statement from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which oversees operations for the Webb mission. Thomas is on a research team that has arranged to use the observatory to study an interstellar object, should one appear during the telescope's first year of work. Webb brings some new talents to the table as well. "The supreme sensitivity and power of Webb now present us with an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the chemical composition of these interstellar objects and find out so much more about their nature: where they come from, how they were made, and what they can tell us about the conditions present in their home systems," Martin Cordiner, principal investigator of the project, said in the statement. Cordiner is an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.... "We've never been able to observe interstellar objects in this region of the infrared," Thomas said. "It opens a lot of opportunities for the different compositional signatures that we're interested in. That's going to be a huge boon for us!" Specifically, the team would use infrared observations to study any gas and dust that the interstellar object is emitting, giving scientists a taste of the object's native system. Right now, far out in space, the Webb Telescope has finished the first stage of aligning its 18-segmented primary mirror, reports another article at Space.com. "A single star that the observatory looked at was deliberately rendered 18 times into a hexagonal shape. "Eventually, those 18 images will perfectly align into a single, sharp focus, but the interim result portrays a star repeated perfectly in a hexagonal pattern reminiscent of a stunning celestial snowflake." Further Reading: "Exclusive interview: answers to 20 questions from the James Webb Space Telescope team."

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