File:NASA Demonstrates New Star-Watching Technology with Thousands of Tiny Shutters (49168853661).jpg
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NASA scientists are demonstrating a revolutionary technology for studying hundreds of stars and galaxies at the same time — a new capability originally created for #NASAWebb. The technology, called the Next-Generation Microshutter Array (NGMSA), flew for the first time on the Far-ultraviolet Off Rowland-circle Telescope for Imaging and Spectroscopy, or FORTIS, mission on October 28. Why are microshutters important for astronomers? As an example, M33 is a spiral-disk galaxy littered with clusters of massive hot stars that have emerged within the past few million years from collapsing natal clouds of cold gas and dust. To study these bright clusters, which emit copious amounts of light at ultraviolet wavelengths, the FORTIS telescope will first locate the brightest clusters with its imager and an on-the-fly targeting algorithm will close all the tiny shutters except those coincident with the bright targets. This will allow light to flow to the spectrograph where it will be broken into component wavelengths to reveal details about the physical conditions of the clusters and their surrounding material. The microshutter technology gives scientists the ability to produce multiple spectra at once. This capability improves productivity on both sounding rocket missions (like FORTIS), which offer only minutes of observing time, or large space-based observatories, which can take up to a week to observe faint, far-away objects and gather enough light to obtain good spectra. With observing time at a premium, the ability to gather light from multiple objects at once is paramount. Webb, scheduled to launch in 2021, will carry NASA's first-generation microshutter technology — four 365-by-172 microshutter arrays that together total 250,000 shutters. They will allow Webb to obtain spectra of hundreds of objects simultaneously. Learn more about this tech and FORTIS: go.nasa.gov/2OLW7iK Learn more about Webb's microshutters: go.nasa.gov/2OQEoa1 Credit: NASA Subscribe to our YouTube channel Follow us on Instagram |
| Date | |
| Source | NASA Demonstrates New Star-Watching Technology with Thousands of Tiny Shutters |
| Author | NASA's James Webb Space Telescope from Greenbelt, MD, USA |
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This image was originally posted to Flickr by James Webb Space Telescope at https://flickr.com/photos/50785054@N03/49168853661. It was reviewed on 7 June 2023 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0. |
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| current | 11:41, 7 June 2023 | | 4,000 × 2,998 (1.62 MB) | Astromessier (talk | contribs) | Transferred from Flickr via #flickr2commons |
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