8/10/2023 0 Comments 1600s telescope drawingHe works at the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters. I was talking with Eric Smith about this. And so as a result, you physically possessed the records of what you saw. GREENFIELDBOYCE: Well, for a long time, like, centuries, if you used a telescope, you were the one making the observations. Like, when a scientist uses a telescope, what happens next? Nell, maybe you should just lay out how this has worked in the past. I'm scientist in residence Regina Barber, and this is SHORT WAVE.īARBER: OK. No one else can see it.īARBER: Today on the show, who gets dibs on data and how it could affect fairness and equity in astronomy. And that would be a big change because, right now, if you're a scientist who proposes that the telescope looks at some galaxy or quasar or planet or whatever and you're lucky enough to have your proposal accepted and the telescope looks at your thing and sends its observations back to Earth, you then get a year, a whole year, when you and only you have access to that. They're talking about making all of the data collected by this telescope public right away. The folks who set policy for this telescope are thinking about doing something new, right? And that brings us to today's subject, a controversy that's inspiring strong feelings within the astronomy community. Being in this field, working with the Hubble Space Telescope images, I am so familiar with how competitive this process can be and how desperate astronomers are going to be to get their hands on new observations from the James Webb Telescope. And, you know, the bummer is, as you know, most of them will have to be rejected.īARBER: I actually do know that. That's more than the Hubble Space Telescope ever got, more than the telescope got for its first year of its observations. So that number, over 1,600 proposals, that's, like, a record. The James Webb Space Telescope's managers just did this callout for proposals from scientists who want to use it, and they got over 1,600 different ideas for what it should look at.īARBER: Wow. NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: And the excitement level among astronomers is astronomical. It's now out there about a million miles from Earth, staring out at alien planets and distant galaxies and all kinds of wild stuff. That is, of course, the $10 billion, three-story-high floating observatory that launched just over a year ago. And today, we're going to talk about the James Webb Space Telescope. Barber, who has firsthand experience competing for telescope time, about who gets dibs on the data, and how that could affect equity in astronomy.ĮMILY KWONG, BYLINE: You're listening to SHORT WAVE. In this episode, NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce talks with Short Wave scientist in residence Regina G. On the other hand, some astronomers worry that instant open access would mostly benefit researchers who already have advantages. That might speed up the pace of scientific discoveries and open up the data to a much wider set of researchers. But there is a movement in astronomy to make most results open-access right away. When an astronomer or a team does get some much-coveted telescope time, they currently get exclusive access to whatever data they collect for a full year. The JWST's managers received more than 1,600 research proposals for what the telescope should look at. But it is only one instrument, and scientists all over the world have to share. Some Astronomers want open access to data from James Webb Space Telescope : Short Wave The James Webb Space Telescope is by far the most powerful space-based telescope ever deployed by the United States.
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