Thread by @chrislintott

We're about an hour away from the release of the first proper images from #JWST, the telescope that launched on Christmas Day. (1/n)

Since then, the team from NASA & ESA have been working hard to commission the instruments and get it ready for science. Today is a milestone in that process. (2/n)

The observatory is already hard at work; all over the world, astronomers are getting their hands on data from its golden mirrors, learning how to use new software to analyse it, and preparing to tell new stories (3/n)

One image will be released by President Biden this evening, at 10pm BST (5pm Eastern), and we get three more (& an exoplanet spectrum) at 3.30 BST (10.30 Eastern) tomorrow.

https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1545420689494138880

(4/n)

Of course, the telescope has already taken all sorts of commissioning images - this is a shot from its guidance camera, which has had lots of us drooling even though this is a camera not meant for doing science with!

https://twitter.com/ESA_Webb/status/1544788493871812611

(5/n)

#JWST has good claim to be the most complicated uncrewed mission of all time, and that fact that over the last six and a bit months everything has gone perfectly feels like some sort of miracle. (6/n)

As someone told me at #AAS240, the team planned for every contingency except everything working first time. It's been a triumph of teamwork, planning and engineering (7/n)

I'm going to be filming with #skyatnight at the #nam2022 conference tomorrow, to try and capture people's reactions to these first images, and then we're hitting the road to talk to astronomers already ankle-deep in #JWST data (8/n)

The general mood is, as @marinakoren points out, 'giddy'. But not everyone is able to be excited about the mission

https://twitter.com/marinakoren/status/1546547046932516865

(9/n)

@marinakoren For reasons that aren't very clear, rather than being named after a scientist, the name of the James Webb Space Telescope commemorates not a scientist, but a @NASA administrator, who ran the agency in the 1960s (10/n)

Webb, at the State Department and later at NASA too, was directly responsible for enforcing policies associated with the Lavender Scare, driving LGBTQ+ employees out of the agency. You can read more about this here: astrobites.org/2021/12/19/jws… nature.com/articles/d4158… (11/n)

As a result, many are uncomfortable with the name of our new scientific instrument, and a petition, supported by thousands of astronomers, and by bodies like the @AAS_Office, requested NASA and its international partners to rename the telescope (12/n)

The article in @sciam by @IBJYONGI @iamstarnord @RocketToLulu and @niais, who led the campaign to #renamejwst is a powerful argument in favour of renaming scientificamerican.com/article/nasa-n… (13/n)

I'm hugely sympathetic with this request, and respect those who don't want to have much to do with, or report on the mission as a result. (14/n).

But the telescope and the science it will do are wonders, and missing out on what it will do will mean missing out on much of the story of astronomy in the next few decades. Missing out seems impossible. (15/n)

I really hope @NASA see sense. @dr_thomasz at #AAS240 seemed to suggest that there was still a chance. It would be amazing if the renaming was announced tonight. (16/n)

@NASA @Dr_ThomasZ Otherwise I will try, on #skyatnight and elsewhere, to refer to the observatory as #JWST. You can think of it as the Just Wonderful Space Telescope, a suggestion that's been floating around telescope. (17/n)

Floating around Twitter. Damn it. (18/n)

Specifically, I'll try not to use NASA and ESA's preferred shortening of 'Webb', which is in their twitter handles and press releases. It seems literally the very least we can do (18/n)

And with that - let's hope the images are stunning, the science can soon flow, and the mysteries of the Universe that #JWST will unfold for us will be a source of inspiration for absolutely everyone on this planet of ours. #unfoldtheuniverse (19/19)