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O__________O

Are the plans for the future use of the telescope public?

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Yes, you can see the observing schedule and a list of approved programs:

https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/observing-sched...

https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/science-execution/approved-progra...

Yes, they plan the year in advance. All submissions for time are based on anonymous proposals too so there's no bias in selection, plus they're open to the public so amateur astronomers that have the skill to be able to write such a proposal, can get time on it, just the same as any other instituion.

I'd encourage those with the skill to do so to apply for telescope time. A friend of mine, with no prior observational experience, had a good idea for a Chandra observation, applied in partnership with an astronomer, and got the time necessary to make the measurement.

It really does happen.

Things like a Sagan 'pale blue dot' image would be a longer shot, but astronomers are humans, too -- if there's a very cool and human idea out there, the committees might be receptive there. (i.e., catching the glint of light off a Mars Observer solar panel or some such thing).

Is it capable of seeing Pioneer, or is that way too small?

My guess is that it is too small, but the RTG is warm.... :).

Sadly seems like it's way too small. Pioneer 10 is ~2.9m long [1] and 2.0e7 km from Earth [2]. JWST is just 1.5e6 km from Earth, so that doesn't make much of a difference. Doing the trig, you get the arc-width of P10 is 2atan(w/2d) = 2atan(2.9m/4.0e7km) = 7.33e-14 rad. JWST has a resolution of 0.1 arcsecond = 4.8e-7 rad [3].

So we're off by "just" a factor of 10,000,000 on resolution :-(

It's too bad, that would be so cool.

[1] https://www.space.com/17651-pioneer-10.html#:~:text=This%20s.... [2] https://theskylive.com/how-far-is-pioneer10#:~:text=The%20di.... [3] https://www.spaceanswers.com/astronomy/ten-reasons-why-nasas...

My understanding is that due to Webb's location at L2, it can never point back at the Earth, because that would basically be pointing directly at the sun.

It also can't be pointed as the the optics need to be actively cooled, hence the giant sunshield and cooling pumps, so it'll never point towards earth/sun

I read that as meaning "Pale blue dot" in the sense that Carl Sagan wasn't a professional astronomer or a NASA employee, he just said "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if you tried taking a photo of Earth from the Pioneer probe" and they did it.

Sagan was a professional astronomer in Cornell's astronomy department, but his rationale for making the pale-blue-dot image was less as a scientific endeavor and more as a way to tell us more about ourselves.

Incidentally, there was a lot more to that imaging campaign -- Voyager captured a "Family Portrait" of our solar system as its last imaging hurrah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Portrait_(Voyager)

The JWST call for proposals page is here: https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-opportunities-and-policies/...

NASA generally publishes the telescope time allocations to my knowledge, you can atleast find the allocations for the next year already on the internet.

The plans are to view things in space. Is that not publicly known?

But in seriousness, if the observation schedule is going to be listed publicly, I'd imagine it would be on the Space Telescope Science Institute's website as they are in charge of the telescope's usage.

https://www.stsci.edu/jwst

Depend on what you mean by public, if made publicly available to universities after claims and research proposals, great. General public is probably a bad idea and waste of resources.

I think the parent poster meant is there a timeline/roadmap of future milestones/missions that are publicly available

The general public can submit an observation proposal, which will then have to compete with all of the other proposals in peer review.

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