Well done! You have recorded your first observation of JWST traveling to one of Earth’s Lagrange points.

Check the screen and you will see JWST passing by!

The Planetary Defense mode on the App will open with the right coordinates and observing parameters.

At 9:50 PM: on the Moving Target Ephemerides page, in the results section, click on the smartphone button associated with the 10 PM time slot to send the information to the Unistellar App.

To avoid an issue that may be fixed soon on iOS, you should then close out the App.

(Make sure you’ve successfully completed Field Detection.)

For example, if you want to observe JWST at 10 PM PST, you should be ready 10 minutes in advance.

Set up your eVscope, check the collimation, check the focus, and compute your ephemeris with your smartphone (see above in Detailed Instructions).

The duration, gain and exposure time should automatically be added in the Planetary Defense menu.

If JWST is not visible, a crossed-out eye icon will appear.

If JWST is visible for your location, you will be able to click on the smartphone icon that will open your Unistellar App and fill the Planetary Defense section with the correct coordinates.

Each line corresponds to the position of JWST at a specific time. Here, you can find a list of coordinates for the night.

After a few seconds, the Ephemeris Results section will appear below.

Then, click on Generate to get your results.

In the Ephemeris Parameters section, select James Webb Space Telescope, enter the location where you’ll be observing, as well as the date and local time when you’ll be observing.

On your smartphone, visit our Moving Target Ephemerides page.

For eVscope users, the tool will also provide a link that will automatically open the Unistellar app and input the correct parameters. Just enter your location (address) and your observing date and time to get all the position information you need to spot the JWST. To help you observe the new space telescope, we’ve developed a brand new tool that can be used by anyone with a telescope: Moving Target Ephemerides. Observations collected by the Unistellar Network and other citizen scientists might include a lightcurve of the brightness change! When the JWST deploys its tennis-court-sized sunshield, the resulting increase in brightness may be visible with your telescope.

Then, you will have another chance to observe, starting the night of December 31st, the 6th day after launch. We’re inviting citizen scientists to begin observing the JWST for the first 14-20 hours following its launch, before it becomes to faint to observe.

The JWST will be observable with a telescope! After a successful launch, it will require six months of “commissioning” in space - getting situated and ready - before starting to make observations from its orbit 1,000,000 miles (1.5M km) from Earth. Other spacecraft like the Herschel Space Observatory, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), and the Planck Space Observatory were previously positioned at Earth’s second Lagrange point.īecause it’s so big, the JWST will be folded up inside the nose cone of an Ariane 5 rocket during its launch from French Guiana. Lagrange points are locations in space used by spacecraft to stay in place while reducing fuel consumption. Its centerpiece is a giant gold-plated mirror (21.3 feet/6.5 meters in diameter) that will unfold as the telescope travels to its eventual home at Earth’s second Lagrange point. The JWST is one of the successors of the Hubble Space Telescope with a strong focus on infrared observations, and will possess the capability to peer even farther into the cosmos, even catching light from the universe’s very beginning.

James webb telescope location