The Truth About Hubble, JWST, and False Color
- By Maggie Masetti
- September 13, 2016
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I get a lot of questions asking why the James Webb Space Telescope is infrared, and how its images can hope to compare to the (primarily) optical Hubble Space Telescope. Why would NASA build something that isn’t going to capture beautiful images exactly like Hubble does? The short answer to … Continue Reading →
Bringing History into Focus: Inside A Moment with a NASA Photographer and Video Producer
- By Maggie Masetti
- August 29, 2016
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Today we have a special guest blog written by Laura Betz about two of our talented co-workers – I’ll let Laura introduce herself! – Maggie I’m Laura Betz, and I work on the James Webb Space Telescope with Maggie Masetti, one of your regular Blueshift bloggers. Part of my job … Continue Reading →
Color Your Own Worlds
- By Maggie Masetti
- August 22, 2016
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Though we just missed National Coloring Book Day, we wanted to bring this cool educational product to your attention. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission just put out an exoplanet coloring book, aimed at kids ages 5-10. (But of course, we won’t tell anyone if you want to color … Continue Reading →
Explore @ NASA Goddard redux
- By Maggie Masetti
- July 28, 2016
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It’s a Thursday, and we are throwing back to September! Why? Because we never got around to reporting back on the huge NASA Goddard Open House, where we threw open our gates and 20,000 members of the public got to come in and see exactly what it is we do … Continue Reading →
Thirty Years of Space VLBI
- By Koji Mukai
- July 25, 2016
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As I write this in July 2016, it has been 30 years since the first successful space very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations were made. VLBI is the radio astronomy technique to use widely separated radio dishes to produce exquisite images of celestial radio sources – and space VLBI allows … Continue Reading →
Why not study all wavelengths of light with one telescope?
- By Maggie Masetti
- July 20, 2016
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I was recently asked why the James Webb Space Telescope (a large infrared observatory) won’t have X-ray or gamma-ray detectors on board. Wouldn’t it be good for such a telescope to be able to see more than just infrared? In order to see the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum, … Continue Reading →
The James Webb Space Telescope and the Big Bang: A Q&A with Nobel Laureate Dr. John Mather
- By Maggie Masetti
- June 29, 2016
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As the person at the other end of the James Webb Space Telescope social media, I answer a lot of questions. One big area of interest is always the Big Bang. And that’s for obvious reasons – there’s a definite fascination with the universe’s beginnings. We want to know where … Continue Reading →
The freest of free-falls
- By Ira Thorpe
- June 8, 2016
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It’s hard to get used to the change of pace. Scientists have been laboring for half a century to detect gravitational waves from astrophysical sources. In 1966, Joseph Weber published the first results from a device he had invented to detect gravitational waves. Weber would later famously claim to have … Continue Reading →
Sweet Update on the James Webb Space Telescope
- By Maggie Masetti
- April 21, 2016
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We gave you all an update on the progress of the James Webb Space Telescope mirror assembly not long ago. But there have also been exciting updates on JWST’s flight instruments as well. They just haven’t been as easily visible, because the excitement was happening deep in belly of NASA … Continue Reading →
Looking Back: The Legacy of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory
- By Maggie Masetti
- April 13, 2016
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There are great observatories – and then there are “Great Observatories,” a title given to four space telescopes launched in the 1990s/early 2000s, each studying a different wavelength of light. The Hubble Space Telescope, primarily looking at visible light, you are likely familiar with; it was the first launched and … Continue Reading →
