With the Oscar's coming soon, many people are already watching the stars to see who will be chosen by the Academy for an Oscar. But, there are many people who are watching other stars. Most of them here in the U.S. are working for NASA and have had a hand in developing or operating the space-based observatories already in orbit around the earth, or the land-based observatories scattered around the world.

Attention was called to this original form of star gazing when the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) onboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) stopped operating at the end of January after returning some 5 years worth of interstellar images. NASA personnel are scrambling to analyze this unexpected anomaly.

But, Hubble still has significant science capabilities. The Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph (NICMOS), the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), and the Fine Guidance Sensors (FGS) are all working. Because of HST's location above the Earth's atmosphere, these science instruments can produce high resolution images of astronomical objects. (Ground-based telescopes can seldom provide resolution better than 1.0 arc-seconds, except momentarily under the very best observing conditions. HST's resolution is about 10 times better, or 0.1 arc-seconds.)

Even as current orbiting observatories are experiencing the results of aging, a new orbiting observatory is in the plans for a 2013 launch. The James Webb Space Telescope, with a telescope many times the size of Hubble's, will have the ability to pick up faint and distant stars that other observatories have not been able to detect. It will have the ability to detect objects in the infrared portion of the spectrum. This is key because the expansion of the universe has stretched out the wavelengths of light emitted from the first stars, creating a situation where the most distant light reaches Earth only as infrared radiation -- its wavelength elongated out of the visible or ultraviolet range.

Infrared light is best collected and studied in conditions that are very dark and very cold, and having a telescope on or near Earth limits astronomers' ability to work in that part of the spectrum. For that reason the Webb observatory will be 1 million miles away from Earth and that much farther from the sun. In addition, a unique light shield the size of a tennis court will be deployed after the telescope reaches its orbit, both to keep it in greater darkness and to allow temperatures to decline to minus 370 degrees Fahrenheit.

But doing this is neither easy nor cheap. The Webb observatory is estimated to cost $4.6 billion, among the most expensive science projects ever undertaken by NASA. But just wait until we can see the images it returns. There is nothing more awe inspiring than to see the incredible images of faraway galaxies and their majestic dance with infinity. With each new mission the frontiers of space are opened just a little wider. And we learn a little bit more about the origins of the universe. This is well worth the price of admission.

But don't take my word for it. Some of the images on-line can be found at the following sites:
Hubble Space Telescope –Spitzer Space Telescope – Mars Exploration Rove