February 3, 2014

Image Credit: NASA

[ Watch The Video: 100 Points of Light: Behind the Webb ]

Rob Gutro, NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center The newest video in the Behind the Webb series, called 100 Points of Light takes viewers behind the scenes to understand what the Near Infrared Spectrograph or NIRSpec will do when it flies aboard the James Webb Space Telescope.

The video was produced at the Space Telescope Science Institute or STScI in Baltimore, Md. and takes viewers behind the scenes with engineers who are testing or creating the Webb telescopes components. The video was so named, because the NIRSpec can look at approximately 100 celestial objects at the same time.

In the 3 minute and 39 second video, STScI host Mary Estacion takes the viewer to NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Webb telescopes NIRSpec instrument was built at the EADS ASTRIUM facility in Munich, German and arrived by truck at NASA Goddard on Sept. 20, 2013.

Mary interviewed Dr. Pierre Ferruit, James Webb Space Telescope project scientist for the European Space Agency during his visit to NASA Goddard who explained what a spectrograph does. The NIRSpec was specially developed and constructed for the Webb telescope. It can take the light of one of these objects and divide it in its colors (into a spectrum), he said. This piece of information is what we call a spectrum and this is why NIRSPEC is called a spectrograph.

These spectra provide scientists with information about objects that can include chemical composition, temperature, mass, and the objects movement and distance.

But NIRSpec differs from existing space-based spectrographs because it is a multi-object spectrograph and it is designed to observe around 100 objects simultaneously. To make it possible, NASA Goddard scientists and engineers had to invent a new technology called a microshutter system to control how light enters the NIRSpec. The microshutter device is an array of thousands of microscopic windows that can be individually opened and closed from one observation to the next so that only the light from each particular object of interest is allowed to make its way through NIRSpec to be turned into spectra. The NIRSpec will be the first spectrograph in space that has this remarkable multi-object capability.

Mary also met with Ralf Maurer, Webb telescope NIRSpec Project Manager at EADS/Astrium, in Ottobrunn, Germany, who explained how the NIRSpec was being assembled there. In the video, viewers are given a detailed look at the actual NIRSpec instrument that will fly aboard the Webb telescope.

See original here:

New Video '100 Points Of Light' Goes Behind The Webb