Astrum Space - The New Era of Telescopes Has Begun

Episode Date: January 24, 2026

This compilation features more of Astrum’s best space telescope videos. We’ll explore the first ever images from Vera Rubin and Euclid, the clever design of JWST, the search for exoplanets in blurry images, and even a telescope attack.▀▀▀▀▀▀Astrum's newsletter has launched! Want to know what's happening in space? Sign up here: ⁠https://astrumspace.kit.com⁠A huge thanks to our Patreons who help make these videos possible. Sign-up here: ⁠https://bit.ly/4aiJZNF

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probably seen images from the James Webb Space Telescope, those intricate portraits of deep space that spark our imagination. But here on Earth, a new, ground-based observatory has started capturing images that are every bit as extraordinary. If you watched my video in 2020 about the most exciting telescope that

nobody was talking about, then you may remember just how thrilled I am about the Vera C Rubin Observatory. Purched atop the Sero Pachon Mountain in Chile, this observatory just captured its first ever images with the help from the largest digital camera ever built. This camera, roughly the size of a small car, and weighing around 2,000. 800 kilograms boasts an astonishing. 3.2 billion pixels per image. To put that in perspective, it would take you about 385 4K televisions to display just one of the photos from this telescope.

That is a staggering amount of data. In fact, the survey can collect around 20 terabytes of data in a single night. Since the observatory is located in Chile and the data centre is in the United States, a dedicated 100-gibit internet connection was built to connect the facility to Miami, Florida, where it taps into the existing infrastructure. The first official images were released in June 2025, and in my opinion, they're among the most breathtaking astronomical images I've ever seen. And this is just the beginning.

So what did these first images show us? How were they taken? And what will astronomers be hoping to learn from this ambitious project in the years ahead? I'm Alex McCulligan and you're watching Astrum. Join me today as we unveil these stunning images and explore how this groundbreaking observatory could transform our view of the universe. Although some operations have begun, final testing is expected to wrap up by late 2025. And just as this facility is destined to become a legend in modern astronomy, it carries

the name of a woman who was a legend in her own right. In the 1960s, when women were rarely seen in astronomy, Dr. Rubin was credited with discovering the first compelling evidence for the existence of dark matter. And she did so while balancing both her career and motherhood. It's fitting that such a pioneering observatory bears the name of an equally pioneering astronomer. And, like its namesake, the Rubin Observatory will not disappoint. Part of what makes images so crisp from space telescopes like Hubble and Web is their vantage

point from outside of Earth's atmosphere. From space, they are able to avoid the distortion of weather and light pollution, issues that typically plague ground-based telescopes. That's exactly why the Rubin Observatory was built on a mountain in the Atacama Desert of Chile, giving it one of the best observing locations anywhere on Earth. Its extremely dry air and dark skies make for the perfect conditions for ground-based astronomy. And the new observatory isn't alone. The area is also home to several other observatories, including the Southern Astrophysical

Research Telescope, the Gemini South Observatory, the Giant Magellan Telescope, and the European extremely large telescope. This location has proven itself time and again as an exceptional observing spot. Interestingly, the Rubin Observatory isn't run by a major space agency like NASA or ESO. Instead, it's funded by the United States National Science Foundation and Department of Energy, and is managed by the Association of Universities for Research and Astronomy. Inside the Rubin Observatory is the Simony Survey Telescope, which became the seventh largest

telescope in the world when it was completed. Its primary mirror spans 8.4 meters, with a 3.5 meter secondary mirror, but size isn't everything. What makes it truly unique is its third five-meter mirror. Most telescopes use a two-mir mirror system to focus light and correct optical distortions that can come from the curve of the mirror, but the Simonyi Survey telescope uses three, giving it an extraordinarily sharp view. Attached to the end of this powerful telescope is an equally impressive camera to record

what the telescope sees. It's the largest camera ever constructed, measuring about 3 metres long and 1.6 meters wide. Designed to capture ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared light, it uses a robotic arm to place filters in front of its sensors. Named after the legacy survey of space and time, or the LSST, the camera will support this decade-long sky survey. The LSS camera is made up of 189 individual sensors and outfitted with three large fused silica lenses. Each exposure covers 10 square degrees of the sky, giving it superb optical performance. That is quite a wide angle of visibility.

One single image can capture an area of the sky equal to about 45 full moons. If you compare these stats to previous surveys like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the LSST is essentially doing every three days what SDSS took 20 years to do. SDSS steadily built up a map covering 35% of the sky over its 20-year run, but the LSST can map the entire visible sky in the Southern Hemisphere, or 50%, with every three day scan. The 10-year duration of the LSST is not strictly to cover a wider area of the sky, but to map our cosmos in a temporal dimension, building up a searchable time-lapse movie of the changing sky and tracking its changes over time like never before. Like any sky survey, the LSST

is meant to look for anything and everything in the night sky. However, it does have four main scientific goals. To investigate dark matter and dark energy? To catalogue solar system objects like asteroids and comets. To monitor transient events like supernovae, variable stars and gamma ray bursts, and to map the stars of the Milky Way. Surveys like Gaia, Pan Stars, Desi and Sloan paved the way. But Rubin will take things further.

For example, it's expected that data from Rubin will be able to. allow us to identify millions of new asteroids, vastly expanding our catalog and creating a data set unlike anything we've ever had before. Luckily for us, we won't have to wait 10 years to see what this new observatory has in store. The LSS team will release images throughout the project, letting the world follow along as discoveries unfold. As mentioned earlier, the first of these images were released just in June 2025. and I think you're going to love them. After just over 10 hours of test observations,

the Rubin Observatory had already captured cosmic phenomena on an unprecedented scale. Millions of stars and galaxies, thousands of asteroids, and these images represent just a small preview of what's to come. What you are now seeing is one of the first images ever released by the Rubin Observatory, dubbed the cosmic treasure chest.

Made up of 1,185 exposures taken over seven nights, it shows a region in the southern Virgo cluster about 55 million light years away. It's the closest large cluster of galaxies to our own. This 25-square-degree mosaic reveals an astonishing variety of stars and galaxies. It combines multiple exposures of the same area,

each taken at different times and with different filters to reveal faint details that may otherwise go unseen. Let's zoom in to a few highlights. In the upper left, two prominent spiral galaxies dominate the view with a trio of merging galaxies just above them. Threads of material stretch between them and both nearby and distant galaxy groups populate the scene, along with a few foreground stars from our own Milky Way.

On the opposite side of the image is an extraordinarily dynamic area, nicknamed Cosmic Drama. Here, bright stars from our galaxy shine in the foreground, with dozens of nearby galaxies clearly visible, and a distant sea of reddish galaxies forming a speckled backdrop. This image contains some 10 million galaxies, and that represents just 0.05% of the image. the 20 billion galaxies that the Rubin Observatory is set to observe over the next decade. Another early image is this striking mosaic of two nebulae, taken over just seven hours and made up of 678 individual images. In a single exposure, the dust and clouds that make up these nebulae may be faint or invisible, but by combining hundreds of exposures, these details become

clearer. At the center of the mosaic is the lagoon nebula, or Messier 8, situated about 5,200 light years from Earth. This kidney bean-shaped pink area is one of only a few star-forming nebulae that are visible with a naked eye, although faintly in mid-north latitudes. If you were to look at this nebula, through a telescope or binoculars, you would see what looks like a spot of grey-scale clouds. This is because the human eye can only detect certain wavelengths of light, but the Rubin Observatory is able to capture a broader range. These additional wavelengths can be added into the picture as different colours. For example, in this image, infrared light typically associated with cooler objects is assigned the colour red, while the warmer

ultraviolet wavelengths are assigned to blue. For comparison, here is an optical. image of the same lagoon nebula taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 2018. As you can see, the Hubble image is rich in detail, and similarly uses various added colors to represent information that the human eye can't see on its own. In this case, the colors represent different particles detected across the image. You might also notice that this Hubble image is very close up. It's only about four light years across. However, the Rubin Observatory gives a much wider view of the lagoon nebula. In fact, the difference is shocking. The lagoon nebula is a staggering 55 light years across and 20 light years tall, yet takes up only a fraction

of the Rubin image. Why is there such a difference? Well, Hubble is designed to focus on individual objects. With its 2.4 meter primary mirror, it can capture 16.8 megapixel images of individual objects, but the Rubin Observatory's 8.4-meter primary mirror and 3.2 billion megapixel camera were built to photograph gigantic sections of the sky in exceptional detail. Hubble's field of view is able to see the equivalent of about 1% of our moon's surface area in a single image, but Rubin has a field of view wide enough to see over 40 times the moon's surface area in one exposure. That means the Rubin Observatory can photograph 4,000 times the area of the sky that Hubble can in a single image.

That's part of what makes it so special. Let's take another look at the Rubin Mosaic image. Not only does this wide field of view show the entire Lagoon Nebula, but we can also identify several other objects. At the top, you can spot a swarm of blue lights. This is an open star cluster known as Messier 21. Just below that, the pink and blue glow of the Triffid nebula, also known as Messier 20, sits about 9,000 light years away in the constellation Sagittarius, and can sometimes be spotted with

small telescopes. Directly below that is another open star cluster known as Bokham 14, and towards the bottom center of the mosaic image is a tightly packed globular cluster known as NGC-6544, which is home to to tens of thousands of stars. The sheer number of stars and galaxies visible in these images is staggering. And to think that on the larger mosaic image, this globular cluster is just a tiny speck. And it's not just pretty images. The Ruben Observatory is already producing real scientific results.

In just about 10 hours, the observatory was able to identify 2,104 asteroids. in our solar system that had never been seen before, including seven near-Earth asteroids, which you'll be happy to hear, pose no threat to us. For comparison, about 20,000 new asteroids are identified every year through the combined effort of all other ground and space-based observatories. Rubin alone is expected to discover millions of new asteroids within its first two years of operation. It may also be also be our best tool yet for spotting interstellar visitors passing through the solar system like Amuramur or Two-I Borisov.

Astronomers estimate that interstellar visitors like these pass through our inner solar system about once a year, but we've only recently gotten survey telescopes capable of spotting them, like the Pan Stars 1, and now the Rubin Observatory. And that's not all. The observatory also spotted 46 subtly pulsating. stars, known as R. R. R. Laira stars, a type of ancient pulsating star that are often used to measure distance. Over the course of the survey, Rubin is expected to find up to 100,000 more of these stars, with some potentially stretching more than a million light years from Earth. By finding

these stars, Rubin can help astronomers to map the outer reaches of our Milky Way and explore its structure. In the first year alone, Rubin will collect more optical data than all previous observatories combined. By the end of the survey, it's expected to generate around 500 petabytes or 500,000 terabytes of data, containing billions of objects and trillions of measurements, a true gold mine for researchers. Once final testing is complete, the Rubin Observatory will repeatedly scan the southern sky, capturing fleeting cosmic events in real time while building a decade-long time lapse of the universe. I don't know about you, but I am already blown away by these early images. And the real survey hasn't even started yet.

I can't wait to see what comes next. If you liked this video, there is another exciting telescope that has just begun work, Euclid. Check out its first light images here. And if you'd like, you can explore Rubin's images for yourself. by visiting skyviewor.app. It's a lot of fun to zoom in on some of these images. I'd highly recommend it. If you've loved the latest James Webb space images,

you need to see what I'm about to show you. Issa's Euclid Space Telescope has sent back its first batch of images, and they're some of the best space pictures I've ever seen. Known as Euclid's first light, this photo collection is a dazzling, tour of the universe's galaxies, and scientists are freaking out at what they are seeing. Eucaly's photos call into question our ideas of how the universe evolved, give new insight

into the role of dark matter in structuring the cosmos, and even let us peer into the past by capturing galaxies 10 billion light years away. Plus, the photos themselves are just awesome, especially the last one. I'm Alex McColgan and you're watching Astrum. Join me today on a tour of what Euclid has captured so far, from glistening galaxies and swirling nebulae to star nurseries and even rogue planets. Let me show you why Euclid is such a unique telescope

and how scientists plan to use its data to unlock the origins of the universe. On the 1st of July, 2003, the European Space Agency launched the Euclid Telescope from Cape Canaveral, Florida. After traveling about 1.5 million kilometers, it joined its siblings, the Gaia and James Webb telescopes, in orbit around the Lagrange Point, 2. This location is ideal for studying and imaging deep space. It allows telescopes to keep the sun, moon, and Earth behind them at all times, so that they never interfere with observations. It's also close enough to Earth. the communications are easy. Since L2 keeps pace with Earth's orbit around the sun, we stay close to our

instruments. Euclid's six-year mission is designed to explore the composition and evolution of the universe. It will do this by building the largest and highest quality 3D map of the cosmos we've ever seen. In October 24, Eucalyz started sending back the first pieces of this map, and I'll show them to you in a second. As Eucalyde continues to scan the sky over the next years, scientists hope the new data will help them understand the role of gravity and dark matter in the structure and expansion of our universe. First, you need to understand three things that make this telescope and its pictures so unique.

Firstly, Euclid's ultra-wide lens captures more of the sky at once than any telescope ever has. It gathers high resolution light data from billions of galaxies, some as far away as 10 billion light is away. Compared to ground-based surveys, it has four times the resolution and 15 times the sensitivity in the near infrared. It can also spot objects hundreds of times fainter than the ones Gaia can detect. In a single observation, Euclid records vast cosmic structures and precise. details of individual galaxies.

The result? An image that conveys multiple cosmic scales at the same time, bringing home details in a way that makes researchers giddy. Secondly, Euclid measures subtle distortions in galaxy shapes caused by dark matter's gravitational influence, creating a gravitational lensing map. This is key to understanding how galaxy clusters grow and evolve, while also showing us how dark matter has played a role in literally shaping the universe. And finally, Euclid is creating a 3D map of the universe with two advanced instruments.

The visible imaging system captures ultra-sharp images in visible light to measure galaxy shapes and positions, while the near-infrared spectrometer and photometer measures red shifts, placing galaxies in 3D space. In short, Euclid is kind of a big deal. The hype in the astronomical community around these images is real, as summed up by one Euclid project scientist. We have never seen astronomical images like this before, containing so much detail. They are even more beautiful and sharp than we could have hoped for, showing us many previously

unseen features in well-known areas of the nearby universe. So let me take you on a tour through Euclid's first light images one by one, starting with our map. Thanks to ESA's Gaia and Planck missions, we already have a pretty solid map of our Milky Way. Euclid is tasked with gathering data on the dark parts of the map. So far it has covered about 1% of the map it was sent to create. Between the 25th of March and 8th of April, 2024, Euclid took 260,000. 60 pictures of the southern sky, covering an area 500 times the size of the full moon we see

from Earth. Putting these images together, scientists created a mosaic spanning millions of stars and galaxies. And remember, this is just 1% of what is planning to do. Because Euclid captures both big picture and detailed data at the same time, researchers can see the sky at different scales. From extra-galactic views, we can zoom at the future. We can Zoom into the galaxy clusters, their core and even individual galaxies. So let's explore some of these cosmic structures, starting with one of the biggest known in the universe. This is the Perseus Cluster, located 240 million light years from Earth.

This image shows over 1,000 Perseus Cluster galaxies and more than 100,000 far away galaxies in the background. Scientists think the way galaxies are organized can tell us a lot about the distribution of dark matter and dark energy. You see, gravity might cause dark matter to organize itself into filaments. We aren't sure, but NASA scientists believe it's possible that where these filaments intersect, galaxies stick closer together, forming a cluster. The theory goes that if there were no dark matter, galaxies would be distributed evenly throughout the universe, which which obviously isn't the case. While many galaxies in the Perseus cluster are already known, cosmological simulations predict

there should be several dwarf galaxies there too. If we could see those faint galaxies, we could analyze their shape and distortion relative to the cluster and background to determine how dark matter is distributed. The problem is, these dwarf galaxies tend to be overshadowed by all the stars shining infrared light, so they've evaded direct observation. Until now, Euclid discovered more than 630 previously unknown dwarf galaxies, which is a huge breakthrough in the study of dark matter. More than dark matter, Euclid is also teaching us about star formation too. Let's go to our next destination and I'll show you. Say hello to Irregular Galaxy NGC 6822.

shining bright 1.6 million light years away. It was first identified as a remote stellar system by Edwin Hubble in 1925. Now almost 100 years later, Euclid is sending back high resolution images of the entire galaxy and its surroundings. The James Webb Space Telescope did also image this galaxy a few years ago, but a much narrower field of view. are interested in Euclid's wide angle photos of this galaxy for what they might tell us about star formation and the early universe.

You see, stars smash lighter atoms like hydrogen and helium together to produce heavier atoms, including metals. This process happens across a star's lifespan, and it's why we don't see many heavier elements in the early universe, because they take time to accumulate. Surprisingly, many of the stars in NGC-6822 have been able to be able to be able to see many of the stars in very low levels of metal atoms. By studying low metallicity galaxies like this one, scientists hope to learn more about how galaxies evolved in the early universe.

Euclid has made that a monumentally easier task thanks to the color information from his NISP instrument and its wide field of view. Euclid has also revealed several previously unknown globular star clusters and H2 regions in this galaxy. H2 regions are the colourful gas clouds we see here. When stars are born, they emit light so strong and bright that it ionizes the hydrogen gas surrounding them, resulting in these H2 regions. Studying these will help us better understand the cloud properties at the time a star is born

and what conditions are needed for massive star formation. Speaking of globular clusters, here's one in a different part of the sky. The other cluster NGC 6397 is 7,800 light-years from home, making it the second closest one to us. This image is one part of a wider image from Euclid, which I'll show you in a little bit. Globular clusters are kind of like Hollywood, a high concentration of stars in one place, where everyone is trying to outshine everyone else. What does this mean? smaller, dimmer stars get drowned out by the bigger, brighter ones.

On top of that, they extend quite a long way out from their centre, with the radial parts mainly made up of low-mass faint stars, that, until now, have been hard to see. Ironically, it is these faint stars that hold the most scientific interest for unlocking the history of the Milky Way. As David Masadri of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy puts it, currently Currently, no other telescope than Euclid can observe the entire globular cluster and at the same time distinguish its faint stellar members in the outer regions from other cosmic sources. Hubble actually imaged the center of this cluster in 2021, but to image the entire cluster,

including the sprawling outskirts like Euclid did, would have taken it far too much time and resources. On the other hand, Euclid snapped this shot in just one. one hour, and it is absolutely beautiful, both aesthetically and scientifically. Sometimes we see stars arranged like this, and sometimes we see them arranged as spiral galaxies. Yet, despite living in one, we don't actually know how they maintain their shape. The next Euclid pictures aim to help answer those questions. Coldwell 5, also known as the hidden galaxy, is hard to observe because it lies in the busy

disk of our Milky Way, about 11 million light years away. It tends to get overshadowed by dust, gas, and other stars. It is considered a lookalike galaxy to our own, which makes it a prime point of interest for researchers. It's pretty hard to study a galaxy you're inside of, since you only get to observe it from one plane. Euclid's near infrared instrument was able to pierce through the dust and reveal the galaxy in all its glory. We've captured it before from the ground, but with nowhere near the detail Euclid manages. The Euclid image might look normal, as if every telescope can make such an

image, but that is not true. What's so special here is that we have a wide view covering the entire galaxy, but we can also zoom in to distinguish individual stars and star clusters. We can trace the history of star formation and better understand how stars formed and evolved over the lifetime of the galaxy, says Eucalyid, consortium scientist Leslie Hunt. We still don't fully understand how spiral galaxies maintain their structure or the role dark matter plays in forming them. Eucalyds' ability to capture this galaxy's sprawling spiral arms and dust lanes in such detail will help scientists scientists understand the link between dust, gas and star formation on a large scale in a way

we've never been able to before. Sadly, we've only got one more stop on this cosmic tour, but I've saved you the best for last. Let's see what these colorful clouds are hiding. Our fifth and final photo shows the Horse Head Nebula. It has been photographed by various telescopes before, but never with such a sharp and wide view as Euclid managed. Again, this shot was taken in just one hour, which is absolutely mind-blowing. It's like someone just stopped at a viewpoint and snapped the picture.

Located approximately 1,375 light years away, this is the nearest massive star forming region. It lies just south of Alnitac, the easternmost star in Orion's three-star belt, and is part of the expansive Orion molecular cloud. It is in this swirling nebula, the scientists hope to find evidence of many previously unknown Jupiter mass planets. One such planet has already been identified. Sauri 62, a young planet 10 times the mass of Jupiter, and a temperature of 1,200 degrees Celsius.

The clouds behind the horse head nebula are illuminated by UV radiation from nearby star, are Sigma Orionis, while the clouds of the Horse Head Nebula itself are made up of cold molecular hydrogen, which gives off barely any heat or light. This makes the Horse Head Nebula an interesting place to learn more about star formation. A scientist can observe and compare how stars form in dark versus bright clouds. Sigma Orionis is part of a group of stars called an open cluster, which researchers hope to get a more complete picture of with Euclid's data. For example, free floating planets have been known to exist in Sigma Orionis, but with Euclid's

ultra-high sensitivity, scientists found many smaller FFPs than were previously documented. As one research paper put it, FFPs in that zone appear to be ubiquitous and numerous. And this is just the beginning. With another five and a half years of mission time left, Euclid still has a lot of ground to cover. Along the way, the data and images it collects will be pivotal to helping scientists unravel the mysteries of dark matter, dark energy, and the origins of stars, galaxies, and the universe itself.

A 3D map of the distribution of dark matter could be revolutionary to our understanding of fundamental physics. Until then, we'll just have to entertain ourselves with more images. as they come out. Thanks for watching. If you liked this video, you may like my other videos on space tech and innovation. Did you hear about Jax's precision landing on the moon? It has the potential to catapult us into a new era of planetary exploration, but it didn't

totally go according to plan. Click here to watch it now, and I will see you next time. For those of you that don't know, the James Webb Space Telescope is going to be the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. An ambitious project, it aims to have a mirror with the combined surface area of 25 square meters, which is roughly five times bigger than Hubble. Developments for it began in 1996, with an original launch date of 2007, but this date has continuously been pushed back. From the time of writing this script, the scheduled launch date is in March 2021. But,

What's the holdup? What is taking so long for this telescope to get into operation? Well, it's complicated, literally. I'm Alex McColgan, and you're watching Astrum, and together we will understand why the James Webb Space Telescope is taking so long. This spring, Uber Eats has you covered. Whether you're celebrating mom, dad, or your favorite grad. Not all of us are great planners, and with the Uber Eats gift tub, you don't have to be. Send flowers, perfume, champagne, or just their favorite meal,

straight to their door. Gifts arrive in as little as 25 minutes, and you can add a personalized video message for that additional so-not-last-minute touch. So this spring, get a leg up on gift giving with Uber Eats, last-minute gifts that land every time. Must be 21 or older to purchase alcohol. Product availability varies per regency app for details. First of all, let's have a quick overview to this magnificent piece of engineering. The telescope features 18 hexagonal segments made of gold-plated brilliant. They combine to make a 6.5 meter mirror, the biggest that has ever been in space by a long shot. There is a very good reason for having such a big telescope in space, namely that in the vacuum of space there is no atmosphere to get in the way of observations made

by the telescope. If you have a look at videos taken by ground-based telescopes, you can see that there's a slight wobble to the image. This is due to the heat in the atmosphere, much like if you looked at a road on a hot day. That's not to mention all the dust and other particles in the atmosphere, reflecting and refracting light, which interferes with telescope observations. Technology is improving to counteract atmospheric influences on ground-based telescopes, but you just can't replace actually being in space. The other big reason for having the James Webb Space Telescope in space is that it is an extremely sensitive infrared telescope.

And in this way it is different from Hubble, which is only capable of looking in visible light and ultraviolet. In fact, the James Webb Space Telescope is more like the Spitzer telescope, another space telescope but with a much smaller mirror, only 85 cm across. Seeing as any warm object emits infrared radiation, a ground-based telescope would easily have its readings contaminated by nearby objects and the atmosphere. In the vacuum of space, however, the James Webb Space Telescope is protected from the sun by this massive sun shield, which means the scientific instruments stay a cool minus 220 degrees

Celsius. Such a big infrared telescope will mean we can look back in time billions of years to just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. This will give us an insight into the formation of the universe like never before. The James Webb telescope will also look at individual stars, an even attempt to observe exoplanets, specifically to try and see the composition of their atmospheres. They do this by looking at the light spectrum of planets as its parent star shines through the planet's atmosphere. So what's been the hold-up over all these years?

Well, the biggest delays were caused by the design specifications themselves. For instance, the mirrors. There is no launch craft that could fit a 6.5 metre-wide mirror inside, so the mirrors had to be designed in a way that allowed them to be folded back during the world. in launch. This adds a massive amount of complexity to the design, as 18 hexagonal mirrors, aimed at an object billions of light years away, means that they must be aligned correctly to nanometer precision. As a result, not only do the mirrors fold out once launched, but each mirror can be controlled individually to a very fine degree. The other design challenge with the mirror

would have been the weight of it. To use a mirror similar in weight to the one on Hubble would have meant the James Webb's mirror would be ten times heavier than it is now, too heavy for a launch craft to get it to its final destination. So engineers used a groundbreaking design, a brilliant mirror that is light but also strong, and plated with gold for the reflective surface. Incredibly, with this design, each mirror segment only weighs 20 kilograms. You might wonder then, why don't they always use beryllium? Well, it is actually a very difficult metal to polish, and designers needed this mirror to be smooth to within nanometers.

This adds a layer of difficulty to the building process. Brillium also isn't ideal for reflecting infrared light. But gold is. You may look at these mirrors and think, oh wow, how much gold is on them. Well, actually, not much gold at all, less than three grams in total. How did they get such a fine layer of gold on these mirrors?

Well, the technique they're used is pretty ingenious. The mirror is inserted into a vacuum chamber, and some gold is vaporized into the chamber. The gold in this vapor form fills the chamber and condenses on all the surfaces, including the mirror itself. This gold condensation gives an extremely even finish, something that couldn't be accomplished through any other method. One of the other key design specifications of the James Webb Space Telescope

was to be able to view hundreds of objects simultaneously. The way that they will achieve this is through some groundbreaking innovations, invented specifically for James Webb. But this technology will go on to benefit many other sectors like biotechnology, medicine and communication. Specifically, it is an array of micro-shutters that can measure the intensity and spectra of light from many distant individual objects at the same time. While spectroscopic technology isn't new, the ability to see up to 100 objects at the same time is. This is an example of the data it will collect. each band is an individual shutter's spectroscopy reading.

Each shutter is also amazing in that it is only the width of a few human hairs. More bespoke devices that had to be designed specifically for this telescope were the infrared camera sensors. These are state-of-the-art, the biggest and most sensitive infrared detectors to ever be made. There will be three different detectors, each for different wavelengths in the infrared. They are very advanced, in that they don't just take one sample per pixel, but several, meaning they can reduce noise and sense if a cosmic ray hit the pixel and can cancel it out. Another design issue they had to deal with was excess heat.

As I mentioned, infrared telescopes are extremely sensitive to heat, even heat generated by the telescope itself. There is a radiator designed into this side to enable the telescope to radiate any, heat it generates itself, as the instruments need to be cold, minus 220 degrees Celsius cold. One of the instruments aboard the James Webb Telescope, Miri, requires even colder temperatures. It can only operate at 7 Kelvin or minus 266 degrees Celsius. This means it needs its own cryo cooler, which is basically a pipe filled with cold helium that flows by the instrument from a pump at the bottom of the spacecraft.

Pumps are an issue though because they vibrate, so a super low vibration pump had to be developed. The biggest heat source in our solar system though is the sun. And to counteract this, engineers designed the sun shield membrane. There are five layers in all, each thinner than the width of a human hair, to keep the mirrors cool and protected from solar rays. This membrane means that while the side facing the sun can almost reach 100 degrees Celsius, the instruments on the other side remain at around minus 220 degrees Celsius. Again, due to launch limitations, the membrane will start out folded away and when it reaches space it will begin to pull the membrane delicately out over the course

of several days until it is fully stretched out. The membrane is in fact, one of the reasons for the most recent delay to the telescope. During the testing of this deployment process, one of the membranes tore, meaning they had to replace it and look into the design to make sure this didn't happen in the actual launch. Because this is the big thing with the James Webb Space Telescope. If something goes wrong, there is no way to fix it once it's in space. So they have to ensure that they do everything within their power to get it right the first time, and with such a complicated design, there is so much that could go wrong. Just look at this launch process for it to get to its final orbital location, which, by the way,

is the L2 Lagrange point behind the Earth and beyond the orbit of the moon. It's crazy. Nothing has been attempted on this scale before, and I don't know anything that will match it for a while to come. The James Webb Space Telescope is actually built now. Everything is completed, they are just thoroughly testing each and every one of their systems to make sure everything goes smoothly come the launch. Because if this mission is a success, just this one telescope will unravel so many of the mysteries of the universe by itself. Hubble was already a wonder, but this will be a serious step up. When the James Webb Space Telescope recently took a beautiful image of the tranchula nebula, Hubble said, Hold my beer.

This incredible image of the nebula, 160,000 light years away from us, is 140 megapixels. For a point of reference, even using an ultra-high-definition TV, you would need 16 screens to properly capture this image pixel for pixel. This level of detail is astounding, helping scientists pick out more important information, and was only possible because Hubble took its time imaging this area over the course of 143 hours, spread across years, across 60 different orbits. By combining all that data into one composite image, Hubble provided us with simply astonishing detail. Hubble cannot delve into the infrared as well as the James Webb, but it does have some capabilities in that regard. This image is a false

colour composite, covering visible and infrared wavelengths. So although James Webb is wowing the world with its images, don't count Hubble out just yet. How can a blurry image of a Star help us understand more about their orbiting exoplanets than a clear, sharp image. It seems counterintuitive, but that's exactly what Chiops, or the characterizing exoplanet satellite, is doing. Chiops is a space telescope launched by the European Space Agency in December of last year, with a mission to hunt down the most Earth-like exoplanets, which, as you can probably imagine considering the distances involved is not an easy feat. I'm Alex McColgan and you're watching Astrum.

And in this video we will talk about the very promising ESA mission, Chiops. This video is a collaboration with our Spanish channel, Astrom Espagnol, which you can find a link to here and in the description. Please show Rafa our Spanish hosts some support. I think he's doing a great job, and if you're a Spanish speaker, make sure to take a look at his channel. Chiops is a joint effort with Issa and the Swiss Space Office, which is fitting as it was Swiss astronomers who discovered the first exoplanet back in 1995. It's hard to believe, given that we now have confirmed the existence of thousands of exoplanets,

but it was only 25 years ago when we discovered the first one, so we are still in the early days of this astronomical field. The planet they discovered is now called 51 Pegasai B, or dimidium, a gas giant around 50 light years away in the constellation Pegasus. It is now considered the prototype for what has come to be known as hot Jupiter's. These planets are similar in size to our gas giant neighbour, but orbit their planet star very tightly, some with orbital periods of 10 days or less. This means they are extremely hot due to their close proximity to their sun. The reason exoplanets are only just being discovered is because they are exceptionally difficult

to observe, as they are hidden by the brightness of their stars. That's why we have to really think outside the box if we want to detect them. If you use a regular telescope to look at stars that are known to have exoplanets orbiting them, you'll only see the shine of the star, as its brightness compared to any close orbiting exoplanet is overwhelming. You can't even directly see exoplanets around the closest star system to us, Alpha Centuri, which is only four light years away from us. If that is our closest neighbour, and directly observing through a regular telescope won't work, imagine trying to observe exoplanets tens to hundreds of light years away. So how did those astronomers discover

DiMidium? Well, Hot Jupiters are often the easy to types to discover, if something like that can really be considered easy. Because they have a strong gravity and are close enough to their parent star, they both orbit each other around a center of mass that makes the star appear like it's wobbling. Depending on the mass of the bodies, the center of mass can be within the parent object, or with objects of a similar mass, it could simply be a point in space. Wherever the center of mass is located is known as the Barrie Center. One of the most extreme examples in our solar system is Pluto and Sharon, which orbit around

a point above Pluto's surface. In regards to Diomidium, astronomers could detect shifts in the distant star's light and confirm the presence of a large exoplanet because it's causing the star to wobble. This method of detection is called the radial velocity method, or Doppler's velocity. spectroscopy. The discovery of dimidium, made by the Elodie spectrograph in France, won the astronomers a noble prize, and it was considered a major breakthrough for European astronomy. Since then, there have been many new exoplanet discoveries, and we know now that the galaxy

is teeming with planets. This is where the Chiops mission comes in. It is already in orbit, and sending back more than one gigabyte of data every day. Chiops orbits in what is called a heliosynchronous orbit, 700 kilometers up around Earth. In other words, Chiops is in a dawn-dusk polar orbit. That means that it travels around Earth along the Twilight Terminator line, with the sun powering up its solar panels on its back. Meanwhile, its gaze peers deep into space, protected from sunlight interference.

Chiops' mission allows the telescope to study the smallest exoplanets we know, called super-Earths. They can be as small as our planet, but can also be as big as Neptune. The goal of Chiops is not to find new exoplanets, but to examine ones we already know about, to determine what they are made of and how they are formed. And that is very exciting, because it has the capabilities of discovering potentially habitable worlds. that might have a similar size, orbit and composition to our home. Chiops is much smaller than Hubble.

It's only 1.5 meters across and uses a 32-centimeter mirror. However, it can see exactly what the designers had hoped for. And here is its first glance at the stars. Now, something about this image is very peculiar. All the stars imaged here are blurry, and no exoplanets are visible. No, this isn't a design flaw, Chiops is working as intended. The reason for the blurry image has something to do with the second method of exoplanet discovery, namely transit photometry.

One of Chiops' key instruments is a very advanced photometer that can detect the tiniest amount of light variations on distant stars. If an exoplanet's orbit is aligned with us, it will transit the parent star so that it covers some of the star's disc from our perspective, in a similar fashion to a tiny eclipse. And that's what Chiops does. It monitors the amount of light it receives from a specific star, and then detects light variations from when a planet crosses in front of its disc, to see how much dimmer it gets. The reason that Chiop's image is blurry is so that light from the star hits more of the camera sensor, increasing the number of pixels that get hit by the star's

light. Through this, astronomers don't need to see the exoplanet itself, but this increased resolution allows astronomers to accurately record and study the star's light spectra itself, as well as any changes that take place from the exoplanet's transit. As you can guess, the bigger the planet, the more light it will obscure, and the easier it will be to notice a dip in light intensity. For small planets, however, this process is much more difficult to measure. And that's why Chiops is so important, as its advanced instruments and blurry images allow

astronomers to better define the transits of those smaller, more Earth-like planets. Additionally, Chiops can measure a planet's phase curve, or how much light it reflects from its sun. When a planet is in front of the star, it will block light, but as it orbits around the Besides, it will reflect light back to us, which makes the star appear a little brighter from our perspective. Here, Chiops's photometer comes in handy again, this time to measure the increment in light variation. By comparing it to the light we receive when the planet is behind the star, when it's not

interfering with the star's brightness, scientists should be able to isolate the spectrum of the light reflected by the planet. With that, they will be able to know the composition of the planet's atmosphere, and since they are investigating only the most promising planets, they can take multiple readings for a more defined measurement. But why does Chiops have to be in space? Can't we do all these readings from Earth? Well, just like the James Webb Telescope, telescopes here on Earth face two main hurdles.

The first one is that we have night and day. a large section of a 24-hour period where no observations can take place, we might miss an important transit during that time. But even at night, the light a telescope receives is distorted as it travels through Earth's atmosphere. Photons hit several particles in different layers of the air, making the light flicker and wobble. Even if there are several methods to counter that, the readings would never be as accurate as they would be in space. That's why, Chiops was launched into a sun-synchronous orbit. As I mentioned before, it will ride the Terminator line of Earth. This not only allows it to receive constant light on its back for

the solar panels to generate power, but it also means it can take a look at stars 24-7 without sunlight interfering with its readings. So, as you can see, with all the data Chi-Ops will hopefully collect, it may just be a matter of time until we can confirm the existence of another planet like Earth, a planet with similar mass and temperature, with the presence of water and oxygen in its atmosphere, all the right conditions that harbored life here. I will definitely keep an eye on Chiops and hope to make a video about its fascinating discoveries in the future.

Did you ever hear the story of how the Harlan J. Smith Telescope got shot seven times? The world of astronomy can be a surprising place, with groundbreaking discoveries getting made all the time. But normally ground is the only thing being broken, and the only shots are images taken of the night sky. It's exceptionally rare for someone to actually attempt to attack a telescope, and yet in 1970, that's exactly what happened. This moment could have spelled disaster for what was then the third largest telescope in

the world, which had only just been completed two years prior. What happened? Why did someone shoot through the glass mirror of an observatory telescope with a 9mm pistol at point-blank range? And how did a glass mirror of such impressive size deal with seven shots from a gun and several preliminary strikes from a hammer? I'm Alex McColgan and you're watching Astrom. Today we'll be taking a closer look at the only time in history when an observatory got shot.

In 1963, the space race was just beginning. NASA was considering how best to visit the planets of the solar system as part of the US's goal to get ahead of the Soviet Union. It was a technical task that needed more information about those planets, so NASA started planning new telescopes that could image the heavens they'd soon be travelling to. On to the scene came Harlan J. Smith. Smith was a driven man, described as softly spoken by his peers, who had a deep love of astronomy. He had just been made director of the MacDonald Observatory, operated by the University of Texas

and located in the mountains near Fort David, and in his first official act, he was able to persuade NASA to give $5 million to build a new telescope on his site. The project went ahead, and production began in 1964 and was completed in 1968. This was no small project. The newly finished 2.7-meter mirror telescope was at that point in time. the third largest in the world, weighing in at 160 tons, with light gathering capabilities one quarter of a million times greater than was viewable with the human eye. Usually, while the electronic components of a telescope can be changed out as technology

improves, a telescope's expected lifespan is about 100 years, which is useful, as often observations can take decades to complete, and it can take 20 or so years for some known exoplanets to complete one full orbit, for example. Undiscovered ones could potentially take even longer. The newly built telescope would be something of a Swiss army knife, but primarily would focus on spectroscopy. The mirror itself was made of fused silica glass, and while you might think that sounds easy enough to make, we create glass all the time, right?

Fused silica is a special kind of glass that's made in a very particular, technically involved way. Reducing the fuse silica took almost one and a half years, piece by carefully crafted piece. In a process of plasma torch hydrolysis using silica gas that required temperatures of 1,700 degrees Celsius. And after the 1,400 degree Celsius process that fused its segments together was complete, just cooling the entire shape back down again to take its final form took another two years.

was all to create a mirror that had almost zero internal stresses and strains, perfect for the work ahead of it. Which is why it was so serious when, not even two years later, a man named Jack Hyde decided to try and take the observatory's telescope mirror out of commission. Jack was an instrument's technician who had only recently come to work at the McDonald Observatory on 1st of January 1970, and we don't completely know his motivations. He was in his 30s, had previously been employed at the prestigious Smithsonian Observatory at Massachusetts, and had traveled to Texas to work while his wife and three children went

to live in Nebraska. MacDonald Observatory was nestled up in the Davis Mountains, where its isolation and elevation meant it had little light pollution and less atmosphere to contend with. The nearest town, Fort Davis, was around 27 kilometers away, so all the staff tended to live on site. But such isolation and distance from his family may have taken a psychological toll on Jack. On top of that, hours were long. Observatories always want to be performing science as much as possible when conditions are

right, which sometimes means technicians and operators could be pulling 48 or even 72-hour shifts. This isn't entirely unsurprising. Bad weather, too high atmospheric dust levels, or strong 100 km per hour winds could call a halt the telescope being used at all, and if you work in an observatory, you are likely passionate about astronomy. But when you combine the isolation from family with the grueling high-pressure hours, perhaps it shared some light on why Jack Hyde, just a month after starting work, showed up to the telescope observatory at midnight with a hammer in his hand and a 9-millimeter gun in his pocket. There are reports that Mr. Hyde had been drinking that night, and was suffering

from bad mental health. On the night of the 5th of February, most of the staff were in bed. The number of people manning the McDonald Observatory was never that high in those days, but only one telescope operator and one supervisor were actually in the building at the time of the incident. Mr. Hyde entered the building with relative ease. He worked there after all, and there had never been a problem like this before, so there was little security or reason to stop him. He saw the supervisor and fired a shot directly at him. Although the bullet went through the man's clothes, it thankfully passed through without hitting him directly and impacted the wall behind him. The supervisor ran off, understandably, and went to get help. Hyde then threatened the remaining telescope

operator and got him to lower the telescope into a maintenance mode so the mirror was easily accessible. Hyde then entered the telescope and got out his hammer. He sthed, he stature. He struck the mirror, expecting it to shatter. He was an instrument's technician, which meant he usually dealt with the image capturing camera and equipment at the bottom of the telescope. He was thus unfamiliar with the properties of the glass mirror, and was surprised when his hammer did not smash the four and a half ton mirror, but instead bounced off, recoiling and hitting him instead.

He did, however, manage to chip off a pear-shaped dent from the mirror, but that was about did. In frustration, Hyde pointed his gun at the mirror and unloaded all seven remaining shots in his clip. Each one lodged into the mirror, but did little more than penetrate a few centimeters. The process of making the mirror had involved taking layers of glass and fusing them on top of each other. This was due to the scarcity of the few silica material, and because of other limitations of the technology at the time, it was easier to make smaller pieces and fuse them together. But ironically, this process had created a material similar to laminate glass. Combined with its thickness of 31.8 cm, it was essentially bulletproof.

By this point, more staff arrived to restrain Hyde, holding him until the local sheriff arrived. Unfortunately, when the sheriff looked at the mirror, he mistakenly thought that it was completely destroyed due to the large hole in its centre, not realising that the centre, the centre of the centre central hole was supposed to be there, and it was just the smaller bullet holes that were the actual problem. Newspapers began running headlines about how the telescope was destroyed, and Harlan J. Smith, the director, had to publish an official report telling the astronomical community that there was actually nothing to worry about.

Ironically, hide shots had mostly missed the vital part of the mirror. To an untrained eye, all parts of a telescope mirror looked like they served the same function. However, the portions of the mirror near to its center are actually largely unused for resolution, as they are shadowed by other components, and perhaps are only used for a little light gathering. It's the area near this ring here that gathers the light used in imaging. Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard, but not the pipeline? That's bullspend, and marketers are calling it out in. Dashboard, Confessions.

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Real design professionals, free samples, zero pressure. Right now, get up to 45% off with minimum purchase, plus get a free professional measure at blinds.com. Rules and restrictions apply. Fortunately, this means that only three of hide shots actually hit a critical area of the mirror, and given that those small centimeter wide holes only contribute to a small, fraction of the mirror's total surface area, Mr. Smith was able to report that the bullet

holes reduced the light collecting efficiency by about 1%, and introduced a very small amount of diffraction. Not only was the telescope able to survive the attack, it actually came out almost completely unscathed. Mr. Hyde initially faced the prospect of criminal charges, with a potential jail sentence of two to 20 years. But when Director Smith learned about the mental health problems Mr. Hyde had been facing, he decided not to press charges.

Instead, he elected to get Mr. Hyde into a mental institution and tried to get him help. It was a kind act, and an indication that the director didn't harbor any actual ill will towards Hyde, perhaps because fortunately, no real harm had been done to either man or machine. However, when he was eventually released, Mr. Hyde did not return to work at the time. the observatory. The University of Texas engineers responsible for maintaining the mirror didn't need to do much to repair it. Using a small drill, they bored out the bullets and smoothed out the holes to prevent any

further cracking. Then they simply layered the reflective surface back on and called it good. To be fair, nothing further was required. The Harlan J. Smith telescope still bears these bullet holes to this day. The telescope went on to have an illustrious career. Images it captured helped inform the plans for the Voyager missions, and it has also made huge discoveries in the field of exoplanet research. Back in an era when people had no idea exoplanets were even out there in any significant number,

the Harlan J. Smith Telescope searched the skies for these astronomical bodies, helping confirm that they are so frequent that every star might have at least one. So, the science community is grateful that Mr. Hyde didn't manage to carry out his objective at the time. Science would have lost much without this telescope, which later was named the Harland J. Smith telescope in honour of the director who had built it. But fortunately, it has suffered little more than a few battle scars from that night over 50 years ago, that it can show to curious observers like you and I.

And to be fair, when it comes to battle scars, it still has an easier time of it than that and space telescopes like the James Webb that face ever-present threat of micrometeore striking its mirrors. So how does a telescope deal with a 9mm pistol? Pretty well is the answer, and it's all thanks to excellent engineering and about 4 tons of bulletproof glass, the more you know. A big thanks to Coyne Gibson, the MacDonald Observatory's present-day manager of observing support who was able to speak to me and provided me with a lot of these photographs.

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