James Webb Telescope to me
On Christmas 2021, the James Webb telescope was launched into space on its trip to serve humanity’s curiosity. It is currently chilling out, literally, at a spot called Lagrangian point 2. It is cooling down. We have been waiting for this telescope mission to take place for such a long time. I was still in school when I first heard about it. Now I’m a working adult with adult responsibilities(hilarious).
We live in a time when, i feel like, not many people know about or even care about what is going on in the scientific world of astronomy. None of my friends know about, sadly. Singapore does not even have any part of astronomy in its primary school books. There was a small segment back when I was in school but they dropped it a few years ago. As Neil deGrasse Tyson put it, “It is narrow-minded of educational policy to leave (astronomy) out.”,when he was asked for his opinion on the curriculum omitting the subject.
I tutor a little boy who told me that he likes astronomy. I was so excited to hear him say that but when I mentioned that the sun is a star, he was so confused and disbelieving. It just shows how gap in the science curriculum whereby kids who have interest are not able to explore their curiosity into this subject in school.
My own interest in astronomy came from the introduction of the planets in my textbook, back in 1998. Then there was also all of those times I tried to outrun the moon at night when i ran home from my aunt’s house. My parents’ faith led them to tell me that each start we saw in the sky were our ancestors, looking down at us and keeping us safe. These, combined with hours and hours of science documentaries fed my appetite for the subject.
I hope to raise children of my own who will be interested in the stars and space. The internet is a vast ocean of incredible information on the subject and I will be relying on it and books I have on the subject to evoke their curiosity.
Every time I’m outside at night, I look up. I look at the few brightest stars that can be seen on Singapore’s light polluted sky. I yearn to see more, to see the galaxy and dust clouds. When i go overseas, there are definitely nights when I just sit and look at all the stars that I can see which elude me back home.
My hope for James Webb is for it to achieve incredible success, function for way longer than NASA expects it to. I can’t wait for all the incredible images that it will show to us.
