How do NASA scientists know where to point the camera from the James Web Telescope. If the camera is pointing one direction , what are we missing by not focusing on other areas?
Help me understand , because in my simple mind there’s space all around us & taking a picture usually only captures what in front of you .
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well we can point the telescope in different directions and move it around, so we can image one thing and then move to another. How we decide what to image depends in part on the telescope and what it was made for. For JWST and other NASA telescopes, an observation proposal system is used, where scientists propose things that should be observed, and a group of scientists review the proposals to decide which ones to do. They will also do some observations for people who have been guaranteed an observation in return for work they did in the development of the telescope.
You can see the approved proposals here:
https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-programs
They generally choose to look at targets that we have looked at before with other instruments, but with a plan to use the JWST to get a better look at the target. Sometimes it will be looking at a specific planet, and using the instruments of the telescope to analyse the atmosphere. Other times it might be doing something like imaging general galaxies and looking at specific stars in the galaxy to calibrate our methods of measuring distances, like in this proposal:
https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/program-information.html?id=1638
With JWST, the heat shield needs to be kept facing the sun, but it can still rotate 360 degrees while keeping the heat shield facing the sun. This means that while it can’t be pointed anywhere at anytime, it can be pointed to most places, and by waiting for its orbit to take it somewhere else we will be able to then see more places.
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