James Webb exceeded his limits to capture the impact of a DART ship on an asteroid

space telescope James Webb had to operate outside of it in order to be able to observe the collision of the ship DART belonging POT in front of the asteroid Dimorphs in September 2022.

According to the space agency, scientists had to do everything they could to allow the telescope to observe the historic planetary defense test.

space history

The collision occurred on September 26 after a trip DART 10 months in space.

POT sent a probe to crash into Dimorphsan asteroid that also functioned as a satellite of a larger asteroid called Didymos. Knowing its orbit, scientists could more accurately determine how far its trajectory deviated.

To do this, all the probes and telescopes of the world turned their eyes to this spectacle to cooperate with the images that determine the success of the mission. James Webb Even though he was not focused on this goal due to his features, he also had to do it.

Prior to release, Webb was tested to only track slow moving objects. The fastest moving body that astronomers hoped to track with Webb was Mars, which flies through the sky at about 30 milliseconds of arc per second (an arc second is 1/60 of a minute of arc, which is 1/60 of a degree). Influence DART was performed at three times this limit.

Prior to the planned impact, Webb’s team had been practicing high-speed tracking of a couple of other near-Earth asteroids, including space rock 2010 DF1, which, at 90 milliseconds of arc per second, was moving across the sky almost as fast as Dimorphs.

“If we could successfully track this asteroid, we would know that we could track a collision event with it. DARTThis was announced by a researcher at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, Stephanie Milam. DART V Dimorphs!”

used artifacts

Webb uses its Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) to track moving objects that it wants to photograph. The FGS is a special camera that can lock onto guide stars, also called guide stars, to stay focused on a target relative to its surroundings. When objects move too fast for Webb, the aiming sensor must jump from one guide star to another to keep the target in focus, which is technically difficult.

Through preparation, the near-infrared camera James Webb (NIRCam) was able to capture a sequence of images of the impact and its consequences, as well as all the material scattered throughout the universe.

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