A Tweet From Dr. Mark Clampin, Webb Telescope Observatory Project Scientist

When I logged on to Twitter today, I noticed that NASA was holding a tweet-chat with Dr. Mark Clampin, the Webb Telescope Observatory Project Scientist via the JWST Twitter account, @NASAWebbTelescp. There were only about 20 minutes left to ask questions, so I scrambled to find a question one of our students had asked in a live session.

Only 20 minutes left to ask your questions to scientist Dr. Mark Clampin about exoplanets and #JWST! Use #JWSTexoplanet.
— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebbTelescp) June 25, 2013

Did you know all of our live sessions are recorded and uploaded to YouTube, so even if you miss one, you can watch it later, at your convenience? And did you know that in the description of each live session video you will find every question asked during that live session?

 

Make sure the About tab is selected, and click Show More to see all the questions asked in that video. Hopefully this makes browsing through live session recordings to find the topics you're interested in quick and painless.

I found a question Errol asked during the second live session. He asked, "It is exciting to find exoplanets, but what is the real value or significance of finding and studying them?" and quickly tweeted.

@NASAWebbTelescp It is exciting to find exoplanets, but what is the real value or significance of finding and studying them? #JWSTexoplanet
— AstronomySOTA (@AstronomySOTA) June 25, 2013

And Dr. Clampin replied!

.@AstronomySOTA Studying exoplanets places our solar system in context; we've all wondered if there is life on other planets. #JWSTexoplanet
— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebbTelescp) June 25, 2013

Thanks for taking a moment to answer our questions, Dr. Clampin, and thanks for all the work you do to make JWST possible. We're all big fans over hear at the ASOTA MOOC.

To see the rest of the Q&A from this tweet-chat, visit the @NASAWebbTelescp page or search Twitter for #JWSTexoplanet.

Here is the live session video in which Errol's question is asked. It's the last question of the session. To skip straight to it, click here.

Ready for Launch: NASA's IRIS Spacecraft

The photosphere is the visible surface of the sun, sort of like the Earth's surface. It's what we see when we observe the sun in visible light. It's where you find sunspots. The temperature at the photosphere is 6,000 Kelvin (5,700°C, 10,300°F) The layers of the sun above the photosphere are called the solar atmosphere.

On top of the photosphere is the chromosphere. The chromosphere has a very small density—it's actually less dense than the Earth's atmosphere. A funny thing starts to happen as you travel out of the sun through the chromosphere. The temperature drops at first, by a couple thousand K, and then increases. The outer edge of the chromosphere is 35,000K.

The next layer of the sun is called the transition region. The solar transition region is the layer of solar atmosphere in between the chromosphere and the corona. It's called the transition region, because the solar matter acts differently above and below. One example of this, is the temperature. The temperature of the sun skyrockets through the transition region. Remember, the temperature of the photosphere is 6,000K? The temperature of the corona is closer to that of the interior of the sun. The internal temperature of the sun is somewhere around 15,700,000K. The temperature of the sun's corona is 5,000,000K, and can even exceed 15,000,000K.

NASA's IRIS spacecraft will study the sun's chromosphere and corona. This will help us better understand the solar transition region, and how the sun's photosphere and chromosphere interact with the corona.

Here's the mission statement from NASA:

Understanding the interface between the photosphere and corona remains a fundamental challenge in solar and heliospheric science. The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) mission opens a window of discovery into this crucial region by tracing the flow of energy and plasma through the chromosphere and transition region into the corona using spectrometry and imaging. IRIS is designed to provide significant new information to increase our understanding of energy transport into the corona and solar wind and provide an archetype for all stellar atmospheres. The unique instrument capabilities, coupled with state of the art 3-D modeling, will fill a large gap in our knowledge of this dynamic region of the solar atmosphere. The mission will extend the scientific output of existing heliophysics spacecraft that follow the effects of energy release processes from the sun to Earth.

IRIS will launch on June 26th, at 7:27PM PDT/10:27PM EDT. Find out more about IRIS at www.nasa.gov/iris.

Teach Astronomy YouTube Lectures

Are you missing the weekly lectures from Chris? Did you know there's a whole YouTube Channel with over 30 hours of Chris lecturing on Astronomy? Created for TeachAstronomy.com, the Teach Astronomy YouTube channel consists of 29 playlists, each containing about 35 topical 1-3 minute videos. A great way to browse through them is on TeachAstronomy.com, using the wikimap. We hope you'll take a look through them, and keep them in mind for the next time you've got an astronomy question on your mind.

Here are the 5 most watched videos from the Teach Astronomy YouTube channel