Successfully shooting the distant universe infrared images, the Weber telescope did it!

On December 25, 2021, James Weber Space Telescope successfully lift off on the EUA 5-ECA Rockets and began to go to the way to 1.5 million kilometers away.

On July 11, 2022, after half a year of "leaving home", the Weber telescope sent the first "postcard" to humans -the deepest and clearest distant universe infrared images so far.

James Weber Space Telescope's first deep -cosmic full -color full -color image.

(Source: NASA official website)

This is the first full -color image of the Weber telescope. The deep field taken by Weber's near -infrared camera (Nircam) is synthesized by different wavelengths. It takes a total of 12.5 hours to reach the infrared wavelength outside the deepest field of the Hubble Space Telescope depth.

So why can the Weber telescope achieve such a high -level observation ability? Let's find out together.

Black Technology on Weber telescope

James Weber's observation band is mainly concentrated in the orange light to infrared bands with an orange light of 0.6-28.3 microns. Its larger caliber and a series of new technologies have brought far superior to the predecessor Hubble, Sipz, Hutche, and other well-known Observation ability of space telescope.

James Weber looks like a space warship

(Picture source: NASA)

For example, it can see a darker and ancient celestial body, and it can even track the traces of the first batch of galaxies in the universe. After investing, it will greatly enhance the related research of human infrared astronomy.

In order to obtain better observation capabilities, James Weber has been upgraded and updated in various aspects, which greatly improves all aspects of performance.

1. Large -caliber lenses

The core of optical and infrared telescope is lens. Its caliber is proportional to observation capabilities, but it also requires higher costs. Compared with the largest Hubble telescope, James Weber's lens caliber increased from 2.4 meters to 6.5 meters, and the light area also climbed from 4.5 square meters to 25.4 square meters.

The size of the main mirror of Human, Hubble Telescope and the main mirror of James Weber

(Picture source: NASA)

The lens is too large, and it is almost difficult to make the whole. Not only is the risk of failure and the cost of material is extremely high, it will inevitably bring the overall quality and volume rise, and even far exceeds the launch capacity of the existing rockets of human beings. Therefore, James Weber's mirror design chose the splicing scheme, consisting of the exactly hexagonal of the 18 side, folded up during launch, and then spliced ​​together after entering space.

2. The mirror material of "ghost ax magical work"

James Weber is facing a completely different temperature environment when manufacturing, launching and work. In particular, its core device's working temperature is very close to absolute zero degrees, and the requirements for mirror materials are extremely high. Therefore, it is necessary to have high bending rigidity, good thermal stability, high thermal conductivity, high reflectivity, low density, temperature variable temperature deformation The characteristics of small and not lively.

In terms of accuracy requirements, the manufacturing and processing accuracy of the lens molding must reach 10 nanometer levels. The error allowed by this requirement is equivalent to one tenth of a piece of A4 paper thickness! And after entering space, the accuracy of the overall stitching and lens gesture control must reach the same level.

Based on the above requirements, the main materials of James Weber's lens selected alkaline soil metal crickets. 10 nanometers are almost the width of dozens of tadpoles.

3. A "parasol" that shields the heat

Stay away from the earth does not mean that it can completely get rid of the interference of the earth. James Weber also face the interference of sunlight and earth reflection light/thermal radiation. To this end, it needs to carry a large "solar umbrella" to shield the heat, and use the active cooling system to maintain the working environment with the core component close to the absolute zero.

There are five floors on the sunburn, which must be opened accurately

(Picture source: NASA)

According to the design requirements, this umbrella needs to provide a temperature shielding effect of more than 300 degrees Celsius. This is equivalent to one side of high temperature fried, but the other side is ice and snow. Each layer of material is mainly composed of polytide, silicon membrane, and aluminum film. The thickest layer is only 50 microns, which is smaller than the diameter of human hair, while the middle layer is only 25 microns.

The greater difficulty is behind -how does this "solar umbrella" start smoothly?

The area of ​​each layer of the "Passion Umbrella" is about 300 square meters. When launching, it will be stuffed into the Rockets. After entering the space, it is necessary to let more than 100 small trailers be expanded by layer under the guidance of laser guidance. The difficulty can be imagined that this is undoubtedly the most powerful sunshade in human history.

James Weber's official poster

(Picture source: NASA)

If the quality of the output is high, the working environment must be good

We all know that although the Hubble telescope is far away in space, it is only about 575 kilometers from the surface of the earth, and it can be said that "closely" with the earth. Why can't James Weber work in a place near the earth like the Hubble Telescope?

This is because the earth is the same as all objects, and it is a heat source, which reflects the sun and radiate infrared rays at a steady stream, otherwise it will continue to warm up. Therefore, even in space, the inevitable escape air molecules and interstellar dust are inevitable near the earth, which still affects the space telescope. For more precise James Weber, these influences are particularly obvious. Therefore, it must do everything away from its birthplace -Earth. However, after the "escape" the earth, it is not a lot of everything. Entering the confusing gravity world, the spacecraft will be affected by the gravity of the sun, the earth, the moon, and even the universe, which makes it difficult for its orbit to stabilize. For a large telescope with a large quality and volume, frequently maintain the track through the engine work, which will not only cause a large number of pushing agents during launch, but also greatly affect the observation quality.

James Weber Space Telescope Location Schematic

(Picture source: NASA)

Therefore, a balance must be found in the above requirements. After weighing the advantages and disadvantages, the scientists chose Ragron Day, which was balancing at the ground-to-earth gravity, as James Weber's work place. It is 1.5 million kilometers from the earth (only 380,000 kilometers from the earth), which is far from the interference of the heat and dust source of the earth, and the temperature is below minus 220 degrees Celsius, which can meet the overall work temperature environment of the telescope.

In addition, at the "2 o'clock of the Japanese-Ellagrane day", the two major sources of gravitational sources of the sun and the earth are coexisting in harmony, and the spaceware in the nearby traction around the sun stabilize, and the rails required for the spacecraft maintain a very low cost.

When the James Weber telescope was launched as soon as possible, people began to look forward to what it would bring to humans? And this time the photo returned to the earth undoubtedly proved its strength. We look forward to continuing to explore towards the boundaries of the universe and further show the mystery from the depths of the universe to humans.

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