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Happy Snakes Day!

The James Webb Space Telescope is the largest, most powerful space telescope ever built. It will allow scientists to look at what our universe was like about 200 million years after the Big Bang. The telescope will be able to capture images of some of the first galaxies ever formed. It will also be able to observe objects in our solar system from Mars outward, look inside dust clouds to see where new stars and planets are forming and examine the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars.

Here are some fun facts about the James Webb Space Telescope:
1. ITS VERY VERY Big!
The Webb telescope is as tall as a 3-story building and as long as a tennis court! It is so big that it has to fold origami-style to fit inside the rocket to launch. The telescope will unfold, sunshield first, once in space.
2. It uses giant, gold-coated mirrors to see the universe.
Space telescopes “see” by using mirrors to collect and focus light from distant stars. (Check out our telescopes page to learn more about how space telescopes work.) The bigger the mirror, the more details the telescope can see. It’s very difficult to launch a giant, heavy mirror into space. So, engineers gave the Webb telescope 18 smaller mirrors that fit together like a puzzle. The mirrors fold up inside the rocket, then unfold to form one large mirror in orbit.
Why are the mirrors gold? A thin layer of gold helps the mirrors reflect infrared light!

3. It can see through dust clouds
The James Webb Space Telescope sees the universe in light that is invisible to human eyes. This light is called infrared radiation, and we can feel it as heat. Firefighters use infrared cameras to see and rescue people through the smoke in a fire. The James Webb Space Telescope will use its infrared cameras to see through dust in our universe. Stars and planets form inside those dust clouds, so peeking inside could lead to exciting new discoveries! It will also be able to see objects (like the first galaxies) that are so far away that the expansion of the universe has made their light shift from visible to infrared!

4. wears a "hat" to help block heat and light from the Sun.
The Webb telescope’s cameras are sensitive to heat from the Sun. Just like you might wear a hat or a visor to block the Sun from your eyes, Webb has a sunshield to protect its instruments and mirrors. The telescope’s sunshield is about the size of a tennis court. The temperature difference between the sun-facing and shaded sides of the telescope is more than 600 degrees Fahrenheit!

5. It will be hunting for signs of life on other
planets.

Our solar system isn’t the only home for planets! Scientists have discovered thousands of planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. These are called exoplanets. The James Webb Space Telescope will help to study the atmospheres of exoplanets. Could the atmospheres of some exoplanets hold the building blocks for life? We will find out soon!

Webb uses infrared. Webb is 100 times more powerful than Hubble, a Hubble image on a piece of paper needs a whole wall from Webb. The James Webb telescope will be able to look back at billions of years of space history to tell us more about the first galaxies.

Butterflies

Ștefania Mărăcineanu was a Romanian physicist.
After World War I, with support from Constantin Kirițescu, Mărăcineanu obtained a fellowship that allowed her to travel to Paris to further her studies. In 1919 she took a course on radioactivity at the Sorbonne with Marie Curie.
Mărăcineanu researched the half-life of polonium and devised methods of measuring alpha decay. This work led her to believe that radioactive isotopes could be formed from atoms as a result of exposure to polonium's alpha rays; an observation which would lead to the Joliot-Curies' 1935 Nobel Prize.
Mărăcineanu publicly claimed that she discovered artificial radioactivity during her years of research in Paris, as evidenced by her doctoral dissertation, presented more than 10 years earlier. "Mărăcineanu wrote to Lise Meitner in 1936, expressing her disappointment that Irene Joliot Curie, without her knowledge, used much of her work, especially that related to artificial radioactivity, in her work.
Mărăcineanu also investigated the possibility of sunlight inducing radioactivity; work which was contested by other researchers. Nevertheless, a 1927 article from the Geraldton Guardian remarked: "Cheaper radium is foreshadowed in a communication to the French Academy of Sciences by a girl scientist, Mlle. Maricaneanu[sic], who [...] by means of lengthy laboratory experiments, has been able to demonstrate that lead exposed for a long time to the sun recovers its radioactive properties. The mechanism of this transformationi s a complete mystery but it is regarded of such tremendous importance to medical science that further close research work is to be pursued.

An aurora[a] (plural: auroras or aurorae, also commonly known as the polar lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras display dynamic patterns of brilliant lights that appear as curtains, rays, spirals, or dynamic flickers covering the entire sky.