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I'd encourage those with the skill to do so to apply for telescope time. A friend of mine, with no prior observational experience, had a good idea for a Chandra observation, applied in partnership with an astronomer, and got the time necessary to make the measurement.

It really does happen.

Things like a Sagan 'pale blue dot' image would be a longer shot, but astronomers are humans, too -- if there's a very cool and human idea out there, the committees might be receptive there. (i.e., catching the glint of light off a Mars Observer solar panel or some such thing).




The JWST call for proposals page is here: https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-opportunities-and-policies/...


My understanding is that due to Webb's location at L2, it can never point back at the Earth, because that would basically be pointing directly at the sun.


I read that as meaning "Pale blue dot" in the sense that Carl Sagan wasn't a professional astronomer or a NASA employee, he just said "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if you tried taking a photo of Earth from the Pioneer probe" and they did it.


Sagan was a professional astronomer in Cornell's astronomy department, but his rationale for making the pale-blue-dot image was less as a scientific endeavor and more as a way to tell us more about ourselves.

Incidentally, there was a lot more to that imaging campaign -- Voyager captured a "Family Portrait" of our solar system as its last imaging hurrah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Portrait_(Voyager)


It also can't be pointed as the the optics need to be actively cooled, hence the giant sunshield and cooling pumps, so it'll never point towards earth/sun


Is it capable of seeing Pioneer, or is that way too small?


Sadly seems like it's way too small. Pioneer 10 is ~2.9m long [1] and 2.0e7 km from Earth [2]. JWST is just 1.5e6 km from Earth, so that doesn't make much of a difference. Doing the trig, you get the arc-width of P10 is 2atan(w/2d) = 2atan(2.9m/4.0e7km) = 7.33e-14 rad. JWST has a resolution of 0.1 arcsecond = 4.8e-7 rad [3].

So we're off by "just" a factor of 10,000,000 on resolution :-(

It's too bad, that would be so cool.

[1] https://www.space.com/17651-pioneer-10.html#:~:text=This%20s.... [2] https://theskylive.com/how-far-is-pioneer10#:~:text=The%20di.... [3] https://www.spaceanswers.com/astronomy/ten-reasons-why-nasas...


My guess is that it is too small, but the RTG is warm.... :).




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