Oklahoma City Astronomy Club Meeting

Please note that the meeting had to be rescheduled to the first Friday this month.
Free to the public and all are welcome to attend.

Our program will be a Zoom presentation by Mike Menzel, a retired engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Mr. Menzel's presentation will be titled, "The Science and Mission of the James Webb Space Telescope." 

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched on December 25, 2021, is NASA’s successor mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. JWST has been designed and developed to observe “first light” objects in the nascent universe, the evolution of galaxies over cosmic history, star birth within our own galaxy, planet formation and evolution both in our solar system and in solar systems around other stars and to make detailed observations of some of the recently discovered exoplanets. The JWST telescope has an aperture greater than 6 meters in diameter, and along with its compliment of science instruments must be cooled to cryogenic temperatures below 50K. It will be operated at the Sun-Earth L2 point to keep thermal sources such as the Sun and Earth in the same general direction so that their radiation can be shielded by a “tennis court sized” sunshield, allowing the payload to attain these temperatures passively. This presentation will give an overview of the JWST science and its systems design challenges. Mr. Menzel's presentation will then discuss the lessons learned from this mission.

As we do every year, elections for officers to the Oklahoma City Astronomy Club's Executive Board for the 2026 term will occur at this month's (November's) club meeting.