Wayland Temple Blasts Into Deepest Space

WAYLAND, MA — For a little while this week, the congregants at a Wayland Jewish temple blasted into the deepest reaches of space.

On Sunday, Temple Shir Tikva hosted a NASA astronomer who helped launch the James Webb Space Telescope, which has provided the highest resolution images of the farthest reaches of space to date.

Here's more from Pam Laufer, co-chair of Temple Shir Tikva's Adult Community Engagement Committee:

As the winter’s first snowfall got underway, Kathryn Flanagan, astronomer emerita at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), gave a riveting presentation about the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to a spellbound audience of 100+ people at Temple Shir Tikva in Wayland on Sunday.

Flanagan, former mission head of JWST and former deputy director of STScI, explained how the telescope uses infrared sensitivity to look at distant galaxies and peer into dusty environments, seeing the first galaxies formed shortly after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. Floating about a million miles from Earth, the telescope explores regions where stars and planets form, and traces how galaxies have evolved over time.

"Astronomers have been racing to analyze the latest JWST observations and publish findings with breathtaking speed," Flanagan said. "This mission is an international collaboration and has captured the imagination of people all over the world. It is especially fitting that JWST data are available for anyone to access. In fact, citizen scientists are already contributing in a big way, creating stunning images from the publicly available data. It’s a very democratic process that is transforming our understanding of the universe."

Before JWST, optics used in space telescopes were limited in size since they needed to fit into rockets. JWST embraced an innovative design that segmented the mirrors, which were folded for launch and unfolded in space, dramatically improving the sensitivity, and providing exquisite imaging.

As the largest astrophysics mission in NASA's history, JWST was launched on Dec. 25, 2021, and
released its first science images and data sets in July. Since then, JWST continues to break its own records by releasing new images of stars, galaxies, and exoplanets deeper and further back in time

"I’m so glad that Temple Shir Tikva was able to bring Dr. Flanagan to speak to our community. We really love being able to learn together," Temple Shir Tikva congregant Jill Abend said.