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#rename jwst
roversrovers · 2 years
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rainbowonyourparade · 2 years
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Since JWST pics are going around, what with the new release and all, I'd like to clue tumblr users in to the Rename JWST campaign that many astronomers have been on for ages since that seems to not be common knowledge.
So most people probably know that JWST stands for the James Webb Space Telescope. It's been an ongoing, international project proposed before I was even born and had many launch delays, but finally launched on December 25th, 2021.
It's named after James Webb, a former NASA director in the 60s, who oversaw tne Mercury and Gemini missions. It was originally going to be named the Next Generation Telescope, but someone within nasa decided to change that in 2002 because he oversaw the Mercury and Gemini projects.
March 2021, before launch, there was a call from four astronomers in an opinion piece to rename the telescope. They go through the history and arguments quite well in there and are much more articulate than me lol, but to summarize: he helped organize what's known as the Lavender Scare where queer people were kicked out of government jobs simply for being queer. The authors suggest naming the telescope after Harriet Tubman because she navigated using the north star.
The piece kicked off a lot of astronomers protesting the name, especially on twitter where many are quite active, but nasa claimed there was "no evidence... that warrants changing the name." Which is, uh. Well. Utter bullshit. The evidence is literally publically accessible.
Even the American Astronomical Society (AAS, the main organization for astronomers in the united states) thought NASA's reasoning wasn't transparent enough and sent nasa a letter in November 2021 asking for more info. It's gone unanswered as far as i know.
March 2022, Nature published documents that showed that, yeah. He was a Bad Dude and was definitely involved in keeping queer people out of NASA because they were queer. Again, there was outcry. Again, nothing happened.
Issues within the astronomy community tend to be pretty niche, so I'm not surprised that when I mentioned it to my mom she wasn't aware. So I thought I'd make a post here so people would know.
There's really no resolution here except to bother NASA to change the name. You can sign this petition, but it does seem to be aimed at astronomers. It's also a google doc, sooo.... yeah. There really is no recourse other than to bother the agency leaders though. If you want to be clear about things, you gotta use the current name of the telescope, unfortunately. Though I have seen some fun alternative acronym meanings on twitter lol.
Dr. Katie Mack, a well respected astronomer, recommended this youtube video on this same subject on twitter and while I haven't watched it yet myself, I trust her judgement so it's probably good.
But yeah, that's what I know. I just wanted to raise awareness that, while space is definitely gay, NASA is still a government agency with many queerphobes in positions of power.
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Clubbing to NASA’s waiting music
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mynameismarss · 2 years
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APOD (July 18th) Stephan's Quintet from Webb, Hubble, and Subaru
OK, but why can't you combine images from Webb and Hubble? You can, and today's featured image shows one impressive result. Although the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) has a larger mirror than Hubble, it specializes in infrared light and can't see blue -- only up to about orange. Conversely, the Hubble Space Telescope (Hubble) has a smaller mirror than Webb and can't see as far into the infrared as Webb, but can image not only blue light but even ultraviolet. Therefore, Webb and Hubble data can be combined to create images across a wider variety of colors. The featured image of four galaxies from Stephan's Quintet shows Webb images as red and also includes images taken by Japan's ground-based Subaru telescope in Hawaii. Because image data for Webb, Hubble, and Subaru are made freely available, anyone around the world can process it themselves, and even create intriguing and scientifically useful multi-observatory montages. Stephan's Quintet from just: Webb, Hubble
for more info:
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thatflutefaggot456 · 2 years
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Hey, IDK if you all know, because I have a feeling you don't, but uuuuuhhhh...stop using JWST's full name.
James Webb served the Truman administration during the Lavender Scare as part of a Senate Committee to find homosexuals in the government and remove them from their positions. His task force's mission was to get rid of "sex perverts" in the government.
Queer astronomers have been calling for JWST to be renamed and NASA has refused. So, we've resorted to not saying his name, taking away mentions of his "legacy."
Queer physicists are already leaving at incredibly high rates, so standing in solidarity with them is important. Also, tax payer money paid for this! We deserve a say in the name, and the more public support we get, the more likely it gets renamed.
All love, your local queer disabled physicist.
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cosmic-pancakes · 2 years
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Okay so I really can’t find proper words to describe how amazing the new JWST images are, but if you want to see just *how* much sharper they are than Hubble, here’s a website with sliders between the Hubble images and the new ones (made by Dr Caitlin Casey, a professor at UTAustin)
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foone · 1 year
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Hi I'm Foone Turing. I've been here a while but never really did an introduction post, so...
Hi. Yes, that's my name. I'm an asexual trans enby (they/them pronouns), I'm married, and I'm both older than you expect and younger than you expect, depending on what you know me from. I'm a writer and programmer. I'm better known on Twitter, at the moment. I'm well known for being severely ADHD and I'm also on the autism spectrum, somewhere near ultraviolet. I live near Oakland, California, USA, but I grew up on a farm in the south. I'm a furry, but I don't have a fursona yet.
I'm big into retrotech stuff, especially floppy disks. 80s and 90s PC stuff mainly, but I have a passing interest in everything else. I loves me some weird tech that you have no idea ever existed. I'm also big into analog media. VHS tapes, laserdiscs, that sort of thing.
Fandom wise, I'm a Trekie from way back, primarily in the TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT era. I haven't yet gotten into the new stuff, and I have only a passing knowledge of the original series. I'm also a big fan of Babylon 5, Red Dwarf, and Doctor Who (4th doctor, and new who doctors 9,10,11). I watch a bunch of British panel shows: HIGNFY, Mock the Week, Nevermind the Buzzcocks, 8 out of 10 cats (primarily the countdown spinoff).
I am a Big Hater on crytypocurrentseas and AI art. I used to be famously mad at the JWST, but now that it's in space and functional, I've calmed down. They just need to rename it and I'm golden.
I'm currently splitting my social media presence across three sites:
* Tumblr, obviously. Shitposting, jokes, queer stuff, and queer joke shitposts are all going here.
* mastodon: I'm putting my tech stuff here. Teardowns, building new death generators, fun historical weirdness.
* Twitter: formerly my primary platform, but now I just use it to keep in touch with people and make fun of the impending collapse of Twitter.
Stuff I do and have done after the readmore.
(I'm on mobile now but I'll get back to this on the desktop and add more links)
* I run lettuce.wtf, a webcam showing a lettuce to see if it will outlast Twitter. (My money is literally on the lettuce)
* my long running site The Death Generator: a tool for making fake video game screenshots, with user supplied dialogue.
* I run some Twitter bots, one of which is more popular than me, and all of which will need to be migrated soon: Gay Cats, WinIcons, Print Shop Deluxe, and Every Clue Line.
* I got Microsoft 3D Movie Maker open sourced
* I got rickrolled so hard that it ended up on national TV
* I ran doom on a pregnancy test
* I have made many horrible and weird keyboards. Keyboards with hair, keyboards which write poetry, keyboards that take 5 hours to say "hello world", keyboards with randomly placed keys, keyboards with 7 toggle switches instead of buttons, and many more.
* I tear down random electronics and try to figure out and explain how they work. (originally on Twitter, but moving over to mastodon now)
* I pissed off the FBI on more than one occasion. They tried to get me fired, they delayed my wedding by over a month, and they mentioned my 4chan nickname in a federal trial.
* I used to work for 4chan. I was a moderator and coder, I created /rs/ and /r9k/, and I convinced moot to destroy the original politics board (for obvious reasons). Things went further to shit after I left, but I am still glad I left. Oh and I also inadvertently prevented the creation of the 4chan dating/meet up site by being too ADHD to actually complete development of it. You're welcome.
* I ran a windows 95 machine for the maximum amount of time. There's a bug where it crashes after 49.7 days of uptime, so I let it happen. I livestreamed the end on YouTube.
* I've done exhibits at the Vintage Computer Festival on the history of floppy disks and optical discs.
* I've worked with the Video Game History Foundation (and others) to preserve old games and game development resources (source code and such). I'm big into archival!
* I wrote a really famous Twitter thread about the surprising way our vision works, which is still circulating in screenshots (including on Tumblr!) something like 5-6 years later.
* I made my old apartment play the Zelda Ocarina of Time shop music when you walked I the door.
* I run the Tumblr animefloppies, collecting screenshots and GIFs of floppy disks in anime.
* I run several other sub-tumblrs for collecting weird things, but I'll have to link them later.
* I am technically a speedrunner. I did the TAS of Duke Nukem 1, episode 1, and a joke speedrun of Solar Winds, where I beat the game by ignoring every single possible objective and just flying to the end, which takes over an hour.
* I used to make games. Some of them are available for download.
* but it still do, too: I'm working on a (currently unnamed) game about managing a dairy farm. Both the developers have ADHD. This is going to take forever before it comes out, if it ever does.
* I'm currently working on three books. Two are compilations of stuff previously twitterized, one is a novel:
- Always Screaming Forever: non-fiction, stories about my career in the tech industry and various other tech/science/history stuff I love ranting about.
- The Other Side of Screaming: fiction. My short stories.
- Mundane Kaya Sona (placeholder title): a linguist gets pulled into an FBI investigation into a car crash. An unknown language leads to the discovery of a wizard living in a forest in Oregon, and an interdimensional plot to smuggle nuclear weapons to another world, and break a cold war stalemate we (the planet earth) didn't realize we were in. I've been working on the setting for this story since I was about 7 years old, and I'm excited to finally get it out of my head and into yours.
* I'm probably forgetting like 5-10 major things I've done but ADHD is a hell of a drug. I'll add more as they come to me.
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merelygifted · 2 years
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New Revelations Raise Pressure on NASA to Rename the James Webb Space Telescope - Scientific American
Sadness. Disappointment. Frustration. Anger. These are some of the reactions from LGBTQ+ astronomers over the latest revelations regarding NASA’s decision not to rename the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), given that the agency long had evidence suggesting its Apollo-era administrator James Webb was involved in the persecution of gay and lesbian federal employees during the 1950s and 1960s.
The new information came to light late last month when nearly 400 pages of e-mails were posted online by the journal Nature, which obtained the exchanges under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Since early last year, four researchers have been leading the charge for NASA to alter the name of the $10-billion flagship mission, launched in December 2021, which will provide unparalleled views of the universe. The e-mails make clear that, behind the scenes, NASA was well aware of Webb’s problematic legacy even as the agency’s leadership declined to take his name off the project.
“Reading through the exchanges, it seems that LGBTQ+ scientists and the concern we raised are not really what they care about,” says Yao-Yuan Mao of Rutgers University, who maintains the online Astronomy and Astrophysics Outlist of openly LGBTQ+ researchers.
“It’s almost amusing how incompetent the whole thing was,” says Scott Gaudi, an astronomer at the Ohio State University, “and how little they stopped to think of how important an issue this was to the queer astronomical community and how important NASA is for young queer kids trying to find aspirational reasons to just keep going.”  ...
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hereticalteapot · 2 years
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The fact that they didn't rename the JWST and now i have to regularly see people talking about James Webb is very tiring.
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spacenutspod · 5 months
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TUCSON — Hot and dry air, perfused with a scent reminiscent of a warmed hair straightener, stuffed a hangar-sized room beneath the football stadium at the University of Arizona. The space, part of the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab, was dominated by a gyrating, carousel-sized furnace, fire truck red and shaped like a flying saucer. The swirling cocoon of a colossal light collector. “It’s making 4.9 revolutions per minute,” says astronomer Buell Januzzi of the University of Arizona, raising his voice over the lab’s droning ventilation system. About half past noon on October 7, after about a week of gradual warming, the temperature inside the rotating machine had finally peaked at 1165° Celsius. In the heart of that inferno, nearly 17,500 kilograms of borosilicate glass — roughly four semitruck loads — had melted into a crystal clear fluid. If all goes to plan, the molten material will anneal to form the body of an enormous mirror — one as tall as a two-story house, if stood on edge. The mirror is the last of seven needed to capture light for what will be the world’s most powerful optical instrument, the Giant Magellan Telescope. Slated to start operating in the late 2020s, the telescope, developed by an international consortium of research institutions, will repose on a mountaintop in Chile’s Atacama Desert, beneath some of the clearest night skies on Earth. There, within a yet-to-be-built, 22-story enclosure, the seven primary mirrors will be united in a flowerlike formation, Januzzi explains. “We’ve got six petals, and one in the middle.” Together, the mirrors will function as a single unit, about as wide as an adult blue whale is long, that reflects light into the telescope’s secondary mirrors and, ultimately, its scientific instruments. This shiny expanse will provide the new telescope with an image resolution at least four times that of today’s most advanced space telescopes. And unlike the James Webb Space Telescope, best suited for measuring infrared light emitted by hot celestial bodies, the Giant Magellan Telescope will excel at capturing optical and near-infrared wavelengths of light emitted by cooler, Earthlike worlds (SN: 8/20/23; SN: 3/27/23). That’s light that could potentially carry signatures of alien life. “It’s going to give us the opportunity to find potentially habitable planets,” says astrobiologist Antígona Segura of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. Current instruments may be able to measure a particular exoplanet’s mass, says Segura, who isn’t involved with the telescope’s construction. And sometimes, researchers may even be able to detect certain molecules in a large exoplanet’s atmosphere when it passes in front of its star. This new telescope, however, will be able to directly measure a smaller planet’s atmosphere, without relying on a starlight backdrop, and detect much more of what floats within.The telescope’s name originates with Ferdinand Magellan, leader of the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe. Some astronomers have called for renaming the galaxies known as the Magellanic Clouds, due partly to the explorer’s brutal actions toward Indigenous people (SN: 9/26/23). But according to a spokesperson from the consortium constructing the telescope, no decisions have yet been made to change the telescope’s name. In the meantime, the marathon that is the casting of the mirrors continues. It took about eight years to fabricate JWST’s segmented, 6.5-meter-wide mirror. Casting the Giant Magellan Telescope’s primary mirrors — each nearly 8.5 meters wide — has been ongoing for roughly 18 years. Starting with a glass-loaded furnace, it takes about a week to bring the enclosed material to peak temperature, causing it to melt and flow into a mold comprised of hexagonal columns. After three more months of cooling and annealing, the glass mirror resembles two pancakes sandwiching a honeycomb. The 80-percent-hollow structure is light enough to float on oil, but stiff enough to resist bending in the wind. The mirror then undergoes two years of polishing, yielding a surface so smooth that if it were expanded to the size of North America, the tallest imperfection would be half as tall as a golf tee. Finally, a 100-nanometer-thick coat of aluminum — excellent for reflecting visible light — is applied to the clear glass surface. It’s this last step that will enable the telescope to possibly capture glimpses of alien worlds, in wavelengths of light that our puny, human eyes can recognize. Nearly 17,500 kilograms of pure borosilicate glass were placed into a spinning furnace to cast the Giant Magellan Telescope’s final necessary primary mirror, one of seven. Damien Jemison, Giant Magellan Telescope/GMTO Corporation A 10-meter-wide lid is carefully lowered onto the furnace that will cast the telescope’s seventh primary mirror. Damien Jemison, Giant Magellan Telescope/GMTO Corporation The furnace spins at about 5 revolutions per minute, giving the mirror that’s developing inside a slight parabolic shape. Damien Jemison, Giant Magellan Telescope/GMTO Corporation It takes several months for the molten glass to cool and anneal before being removed for polishing and coating. In this photo, the furnace has been opened to reveal the smooth, clear surface of the glass that will become mirror five. Damien Jemison, Giant Magellan Telescope/GMTO Corporation
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oflgtfol · 2 years
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it really does suck that it was renamed to JWST, for many reasons, but one reason i wanna emopost about is that its original name was just. so good already.
its original name was Next Generation Space Telescope. and i honest to god feel like that would have been a kickass name? because, like, when being presented as HST's successor, it really is coming to define a new generation in astronomy. while the chandra, spitzer, and upcoming rubin telescopes, etc. are fucking phenomenal, they're geared more towards the nitty gritty science, and so the general public isn't as aware of them. but hubble? hubble does the science, AND it does the public outreach. hubble is probably THE most well-known space telescope, nay, the most well-known telescope PERIOD. and it's been going strong for 32 fucking years. so when you have a new telescope being presented as hubble's successor, it has a HUGE legacy to stand up to - so yes, in a way, it literally is coming to define a new generation in astronomy. a new generation of future astronomers who will be inspired to join the field because of it, and a new generation of the general public who will grow up alongside its development as well. this is, in fact, the Next Generation's space telescope
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roversrovers · 2 years
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The Hubble Space Telescope vs The JWST
Same target, a whole new universe
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bagdyernoke · 2 years
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New Revelations Raise Pressure on NASA to Rename the James Webb Space Telescope - Scientific American
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Sadness. Disappointment. Frustration. Anger. These are some of the reactions from LGBTQ+ astronomers over the latest revelations regarding NASA’s decision not to rename the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), given that the agency long had evidence suggesting its Apollo-era administrator James Webb was involved in the persecution of gay and lesbian federal employees during the 1950s and 1960s.
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maeamian · 2 years
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Had an argument with a guy on twitter dot com the other day about an article he wrote that missed some key facts and I told him I wanted to believe it, because his conclusion was comforting and I would have liked for it to be true, but those omissions and doing follow up reading which pointed them out made it clear that he had not done all the necessary reading to come to the conclusion he had.
Anyhow, over a few back and forths I explained that was my position on his work and his stance was that people had made this stuff up to discredit his article and its subject when in fact he had missed it in the initial body of work he was critiquing.
Which like, all of this isn't that interesting on its own, an acedemic got kinda defensive about an article they wrote is a fair thing to have happened, and happens regularly even when they are wrong cause one doesn't advance a stance publicly without thinking they're right at least a little. But what absolutely drove me up a wall was the point in the conversation where he was like "I think it is good that you don't believe me instinctively and double checked my work, but if you truly double checked my work you would have come to the conclusion I was right" (I am rephrasing but I do not think I have failed to interpret the intent of the statements he made) and like you can't have it both ways!! Either you believe in examining evidence when you find it even if that's inconvenient or you don't believe in examining evidence! A failure to examine major pieces should result in a retraction if that piece of evidence means you were wrong or at least an update but nope!
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mantis777 · 2 years
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Yes, rename it.
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sciencespies · 2 years
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NASA defends decision to retain JWST name
https://sciencespies.com/space/nasa-defends-decision-to-retain-jwst-name/
NASA defends decision to retain JWST name
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WASHINGTON — NASA officials are standing by their decision to retain the name of the James Webb Space Telescope despite criticism from some astronomers, including one who resigned from an advisory committee in protest.
The agency said in a once-sentence statement in late September that a historical review turned up no evidence to back allegations that James Webb oversaw policies earlier in his career at the State Department to purge the department of LGBTQ employees, as well as one case involving a NASA employee while Webb led the agency in the 1960s.
“We have found no evidence at this time that warrants changing the name of the James Webb Space Telescope,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in the statement provided to media. Agency officials added they had no other information, including a report, to provide about that review.
Many astronomers who signed a petition calling for JWST to be renamed objected to both the decision and the lack of details about it. It prompted Lucianne Walkowicz, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, to resign from the agency’s Astrophysics Advisory Committee, or APAC.
“NASA’s handling of the questions regarding James Webb as a choice for naming its next flagship mission has made a farce of this committee,” Walkowicz wrote in an Oct. 12 open letter, noting APAC has asked the agency about the issue for the past year. The one-sentence statement was a “flippant, pathetic response.”
At a meeting of APAC the next day, NASA did provide more information about the investigation. Brian Odom, acting NASA chief historian, discussed the review he led into the allegations against Webb.
“What we found was that, with the available information that we had,” he concluded, “there was no evidence. That doesn’t mean there isn’t evidence. It means that we found no evidence in this investigation.”
That review included interviews with historians who had previously studied Webb and examinations their research. The agency also hired a contract historian to go into archives, but many of those archives remain closed because of the pandemic, he noted. “As of right now, with the historical information we have in hand, and with the analysis we’ve done on the available evidence, we determined that there is no direct evidence.”
Odom confirmed there was no plan to produce a report detailing those findings. “As of now, there is no formal report and there is no intent to put together a formal report,” he said. “The conversations I’ve had with the administrator and the administrator’s office over the course of this investigation was all just reporting that there was no evidence to report at this time.”
Odom added he was impressed with how Nelson considered the issue in those conversations. “He definitely always gave me the impression that he was looking at this objectively, that he did want to see the evidence,” he said.
The issue came up again at an Oct. 18 town hall meeting by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The three highest-ranked questions submitted in advance of the event were about the Webb investigation, including whether NASA will release more details about it.
Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, recapped the historical review of Webb. “They found, after weighing all of this, no evidence to point to Webb’s personal involvement in his leadership role or any action linked to Webb,” he said.
“I want to acknowledge that this is a disappointment to some or even many,” he added. “While history is always complicated, I’m actively committed — and here I speak for our entire team — to prove with our actions now that we want to be inclusive.”
At the APAC meeting, Odom said that the investigation would continue once historical archives reopen. “We understand that the past is never closed, and if new evidence comes to light, that evidence will be presented to the administrator and that will inform a new decision,” he said.
#Space
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