A space telescope launching next week will carry with it the hopes and dreams of a Halifax researcher Marcin Sawicki, who helped develop an instrument on board.
The telescope will be able to take pictures of the first stars that appeared in the universe after the Big Bang.
The James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to launch on Dec. 24 at the earliest from the spaceport in French Guiana in South America.
Marcin Sawicki is a professor in the department of astronomy and physics at Saint Mary’s University. (Submitted by Marcin Sawicki)
The telescope, the size of a school bus while it’s nestled in the nose of the rocket, will unfurl to the size of a tennis court once it reaches its final destination about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth — five or six times the distance to the moon.
The telescope is so sensitive it will be able to capture images of what the first stars in the universe looked like about 13.5 billion years ago. That’s how long it has taken for the light to reach us.
“When the universe came out of the Big Bang, there were no stars, no galaxies, no light,” said Sawicki, a professor in the department of astronomy and physics at Saint Mary’s University and the director of the Institute for Computational Astrophysics. “It was a very, very, very dark place.
“We expect that the first stars started turning on in the very first galaxies. And so Webb is built to find, to detect these very, very first sources of light — cosmic dawn, as we like to say.”
For the past 20 years, Sawicki has been involved in the development of an instrument called NIRISS — Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph — that will be on board the telescope.
The device will make it possible to detect very distant galaxies and exoplanets, or planets that orbit around stars outside our solar system.
NIRISS splits the light from everything in its field of view into a spectrum, like a rainbow, Sawicki said. By looking at the intensity of the different colours, the scientists will be able to tell how far away an object is.
The primary mirror of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is deployed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. (NASA/Desiree Stover)
The spectrograph is one of two Canadian-built instruments on board the telescope, along with a fine guidance sensor, which will allow the telescope to remain locked on a specific target.
Because of Sawicki’s involvement, he and his team will have exclusive access to some of the telescope’s data for one year.
100 times stronger than Hubble
The Webb telescope is about 100 times more powerful than its predecessor, the Hubble, which can capture light from about 12 billion years ago. The difference between what those early galaxies — what Sawicki calls “baby galaxies” — look like from Hubble and what they’ll look like from Webb is immense, he said.
“It’s sort of the difference between seeing newborn babies and seeing toddlers, you know, kids in kindergarten. That’s a huge difference.”
This color-composite mosaic of the central part of the Orion Nebula is based on 81 images from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. Researchers will train Webb on this region to study phenomena associated with the birth of stars and planets. (ESO/M.McCaughrean)
Sawicki said he thinks it’s important to learn more about the early galaxies because they contain the history of Earth and every human being on it.
“Those stars, like our sun, contain a lot of chemical elements that were made in earlier generations of stars. And so every chemical element in your body, except for hydrogen has been made in a star,” he said.
“It’s our history, it’s our past, it’s our origins. That’s the exciting thing about it, looking back into the past to see where we come from.”
This image from the Hubble telescope shows the heart of the globular star cluster Messier 92 (M92), which packs roughly 330,000 stars together and is one of the oldest and brightest in the Milky Way. Webb will observe M92, or a similar globular cluster, early in its mission to demonstrate its ability to distinguish the light of its individual stars in a densely packed environment. (NASA/ESA/Gilles Chapdelaine)
In addition to showing what the early galaxies looked like, the telescope will help scientists understand how galaxies grow over time, Sawicki said.
“What kind of physical changes happen in them? How quickly do they build up their bodies, their mass, assemble new stars, produce these chemical elements?”
Once the Webb telescope arrives at its destination, it will go through a series of tests before starting to send data in about six months.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
