Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Let there be snark.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

No one could have predicted…

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

When we show up, we win.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

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

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

The lights are all blinking red.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

He really is that stupid.

The words do not have to be perfect.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

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

by | 50 Comments

This post is in: ,

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

Reader Interactions

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.

Comments are closed.