The Next Big Space Telescope Meets Tahoe Mysteries... Sort Of

 In Tahoe Payback, there is a discussion of the Italian mathematician Giuseppe Lagrange a man who - in the 1700s, 200 years before the first satellite was launched into orbit - figured out a solution to the "three-body problem" for how the sun, Earth, and the moon relate in their orbits. Lagrange did this with nothing but mathematics. No fancy telescopes, no computers, just him and his chalkboard. Amazing what mathematicians can figure out!

One result of his work was the realization that with any two big objects in space - Earth and the sun - there will be five points in space where the gravity of the different bodies and the centrifugal force from hurtling around the sun, cancel each other out. Lagrange realized that these five points - now called Lagrangian points - are like gravity wells. Objects like asteroids that wander by may fall into these "wells" and be trapped. Another perspective suggests that we could purposely put spacecraft into those points, and the spacecraft would tend to stay in place without much encouragement.

On Christmas day, we launched the James Webb telescope. The James Webb telescope will be much more powerful than the Hubble telescope. 

The mirror of the James Webb telescope is made up of gold-plated hexagonal sections. Once the rocket lifted the telescope into space, the mirrored sections were automatically assembled. Together the combined pieces are 21 feet across. That mirror is many times bigger than the 7-foot mirror of the Hubble telescope. It will allow astronomers to see stuff they've only dreamed of.

When they looked for a good place to put it in orbit, they chose the L-2  Lagrange point, about a million miles out from our planet. In the illustration below, Earth is the blue dot, the Sun is the yellow dot, and the Lagrange points are numbered.

What does this have to do with my Tahoe mysteries?

Not much other than Tahoe Payback has a character who is into Lagrangian points. While not hugely critical to the mystery, the concept of places in space where you can "park" a spacecraft is something I find very cool. (Incidentally, the Lagrangian points at the planet Jupiter are so big and their gravity so powerful, that they hold a million asteroids and other space detritus.)

Last we heard, the James Webb telescope has assembled its mirror pieces, unfurled its solar panels, and its huge sunshade. It is now cruising out to its million-mile distance. It will take a few weeks to get there, then it will begin to go to work.

As with the Hubble telescope, we will hopefully be hearing about "James Webb telescope" discoveries for years to come.