McDonald County Library has joined almost 500 sites across the country to celebrate the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's next great space science observatory. The McDonald County Library will offer a public program to bring the excitement of the James Webb Telescope to children, teens and adults.
We are thrilled that the McDonald County Library is an official host site for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope launch of community events. We have partnered with Dana R. Louie from the Universities Space Research Association to help our community celebrate this amazing feat of science and engineering. People of all ages and backgrounds will find inspiration in the Webb mission, which will fundamentally change our understanding of the universe for this generation and many to come.
Webb is the largest and most complex space science telescope ever built -- the premier observatory of the next decade. This international mission, led by NASA in partnership with the European and Canadian space agencies, will launch in December 2021.
The observatory will provide a new view of the cosmos and push the field of astronomy into a new era. The telescope will observe the universe in the infrared, peering inside dust clouds to study light from distant parts of the universe for the very first time -- the first galaxies that formed about 13.5 billion years ago -- and give us insight into how our universe formed. It will also explore distant worlds in other solar systems, as well as objects in our own solar system. Webb will extend the scientific discoveries of other NASA missions like the Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.
James Webb Space Telescope Community Event will be at the McDonald County Library Friday, Dec. 3, at 6 p.m. For more information, visit www.mcdonaldcountylibrary.org or contact Hazel Sheets at 417-223-4489.
The McDonald County Library is located at 808 Bailey Road in Pineville.
The community event will be free and open to the public. This event will be an in-person event.
To learn more about the Webb telescope, visit webb.nasa.gov. For information about other Webb community event locations, visit webb.nasa.gov/content/features/celebrateWebb.html.
For other library news, visit the library website.