Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

In after Baud. Damn.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

You are here: Home / Nature & Respite / Something Good Open Thread / Pre-Dawn STAR STUFF Open Thread: The James Webb Telescope Launch

Pre-Dawn STAR STUFF Open Thread: The James Webb Telescope Launch

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Probably of interest only to those who already know about it, but still…

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50Comments

  4. 4.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Merry Christmas, all, and happy birthday to Sir Isaac! Only 45 minutes now until the launch window opens!

  8. 8.

    SteveinPHX

    One of my sons is working on his doctorate in astrophysics. He’s excited about this. Successful deployment will give the field plenty of new research opportunities.
    Merry Christmas!

  14. 14.

    cope

    I’ve been waiting years and years for this to happen.  Getting JWST to the L2 point orbit and then unfolding the origami observatory will make landing on Mars look like a walk in the park.

  23. 23.

    lowtechcyclist

    Yep, the observatory is on its own, on its way to L2.

    Merry Christmas, and happy birthday, Isaac Newton!

  24. 24.

    cope

    There’s a lot left to get done first but here’s hoping for many a future BJ post about various images and discoveries of JWST.

  25. 25.

    Spanky

    Merci, Arianne!

    A lot of gray heads in that MOC. A lot of guys I know from my time at GSFC have been working towards this for a long time. Retirements deferred.

    Someone’s chopping onions in here.

  26. 26.

    Kalakal

    All looking very good, powered up and on its own. A lot of very happy (and relieved French people ). Now for a demonstration of birthday boy Isaacs orbital mechanics in action.

    Merry Christmas all

  27. 27.

    Geminid

    @Raven: Senator James Webb beat George Allen, which was a good thing, then retired after one term, which I thought was also good, especially when Tom Kaine took his place. Haven’t heard much from him since, which is probably good too.

    The songwriter still wins Best-in-Webb.

  29. 29.

    S. Cerevisiae

    I know that there’s a lot of things that still need to go right but I am very relieved that it’s powered up and on course. Science! ?

  31. 31.

    Ken

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Not sure I like the competition.

    Careful, if the thing doesn’t unfold properly they’re going to be looking for a scapegoat.

    Besides, to me what makes your pictures beautiful is the combination of the stars with the objects in the foreground.  (For values of “foreground” that include “mountain range 15 miles away”.)

  32. 32.

    Fair Economist

    Fortunately as a Left Coaster I slept though the scariest parts. Congratulations to all involved in this amazing feat of global cooperation. Hoping the rest goes as well; I’m excited about the pics too.

  36. 36.

    oldgold

     

    Gerry Doyle: “My rocket scientist cousin just noted that the jwst will launch on dec. 25, the birthday anniversary of a historical figure who changed the world: Issac  Newton.“


    Good story, but Isaac Newton was born January 4, 1643. And, after suffering through 2 years of calculus, my feelings on his changing the the world are decidedly mixed.

  40. 40.

    dmsilev

    @oldgold: Yes and no. When Newton was born, England was still using the old Julian calendar, and dates had slipped by several days relative to the more accurate Gregorian. They switched a century or so after Newton’s birth if memory serves, and you have to account for the ‘missing’ days…

  41. 41.

    Betty

    It may have taken a long time because of mishaps, but the telescope and the launch give you renewed faith in humanity’s ability to do some things extremely well. The collaboration and the precision are heartening.

  42. 42.

    Jerzy Russian

    @dmsilev:   Designers of time machines need to be especially careful to account for these issues that arise when different calendars were in use.

  47. 47.

    Yutsano

    I am of course just waking up now. I’m so relieved the James Webb telescope went up without a problem so far. But to be fair that was the easier part. The unfolding at the end of January…I need to download the NASA Eyes app again.

  48. 48.

    Another Scott

    @Jim Appleton: (Relatedly) It’s a tough problem, but MS Windows seemed to have a really stupid way of dealing with ST/DST issues.  I don’t know if it’s still the case, but there seemed to be a time in the not too distant past whenever there was a time change that Windows would furiously work in the background to change the timestamp of every file.  It could cause lots of problems if some PCs on the network didn’t have the TZ or ST/DST flags set properly.

    “WTF?  Why does this backup copy of this datafile have a timestamp that’s an hour off from the current one??!”

    :-/

    Only 16 years to go until the 32-bit Unix epoch rolls over!!1

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  49. 49.

    Ken

    @Jerzy Russian:  Designers of time machines need to be especially careful to account for these issues that arise when different calendars were in use.

    For example, do not try to land in Samoa on December 30, 2011 — the country changed time zones to cross the international date line, and went directly from the 29th to the 31st.

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