I’m a Craig Ferguson man, truth be told, but I have to give Jimmy Fallon major props for devoting major time to Milky J this week.
C’mon, you remember Milky J: he’s the Hubble Gotchu guy. He was on Fallon’s show again this week, but this time got some bad news: Hubble will be replaced with the bigger James Webb Space Telescope.
What ensued was simply made of win:
Ha! That was awesome! All those people in the video are actual NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center employees (or contractors; hard to tell). NASA can’t buy this kind of publicity, but here it is, handed to them for free. And I love it! It’s funny and cool, sarcastic yet has this terrific undertone of sincerity. And Holy Haleakala, the science is accurate*! I loved the part where the team shouts JWST specs at him.
And it doesn’t hurt that one of the pictures Milky J holds up at the beginning is of Supernova 1987A, which was the topic of my PhD research. Still, Hubble being replaced isn’t a bad thing; JWST will still return amazing images, and also be more sensitive than Hubble to boot. Hubble may gotchu, but JWST will hold you tight.
You can also read some cute behind the scenes notes on two blogs: Geeked on Goddard, and NASA Blueshift.
*OK, fine: Hubble wasn’t the first telescope to detect HD 209458b (not “dash b” as Milky J said). It was seen a while before the initial Hubble observations… and no telescope has actually directly pictured; it’s too close to its star. But spectra have been obtained, which is pretty cool.
