Be neat to see someone else looking for us…
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I get your sentiment but I’ve always been of the opinion it would be cool for about 60 seconds then the end of everything would follow shortly after lol 
I’m reading the Salvation series by my favourite author Peter F Hamilton and he always paints a very gloomy picture of first contact.
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The Dark Forest theory - Fermi paradox - Wikipedia. Cixin Liu’s Three-Body Problem is a fun read.
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If the Dark Forest theory holds true (and it seems pretty darn plausible to me!) instruments like the JWST are vital to our continual survival as a species…
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Info is nearly always good, but it might just be akin to just giving the antelope binoculars. 
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On that note, a good summary of the stuff the Webb will see (assuming it makes the L2 burn and the majority of those mirror alignment motors work ok):
Unlike Hubble, it’s an IR based device, using spectroscopy in the very cold etc, so it will hopefully be rich in discoveries even if it doesn’t provide pretty pictures for posters.
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Bravo to all involved! Quite an achievement.
I’m guessing the God-like egos of the engineers have grown even more 
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Not as impressive as the 66 years (!) between the Wright Brothers first powered flight and the Moon landings, but still pretty good for a 21.3 ft mirror that’ll operate 890,000 miles from Earth.
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Question: how to they position the telescope? I don’t believe it’s gimbaled, and they have to shade it from the Sun. Doesn’t that limit areas it can observe?
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Indeed. They can turn it with RCS wheels, but their angles are limited because the heat shield has to face the sun.
So for some targets it has to wait half a year to be on the other side, and IIRC it cannot look into some directions at all.
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Wow! No matter how we judge ourselves as a species, the fact that humans can place such an instrument a million miles in space is quite an achievement, IMO.
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I like this one:
My first thought was - If that was me, I bet I would spot a Golden Retriever hair on one of those mirrors. We basically exist covered in hair recently… 
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There are instruments that will provide very impressive pictures, just not in the visual spectrum and they won’t be the ones that do the heavy scientific lifting. Nonetheless JWST will be able to produce some very nice pictures that they can show off.
@fearlessfrog I see that in my mirror from time to time. I try my best to ignore them but the ones crossing seem pretty stern and unimpressed with me.
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Watching the individual mirror segments deploy from their launch position at -12.5mm is worse than watching paint dry (they move about 1mm/day) 
I checked JWST’s status on Friday during lunch where they were at -10mm, I just checked again - they have moved 1mm and are now at -9mm
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They are actually speed running them!
The actuators on each mirror segment are capable of extremely minute movements, which allow engineers to align the entire primary mirror by finely adjusting each mirror segment. “They can move in steps that are a fraction of a wavelength of light, or about 1/10,000th the diameter of a human hair,” explained Lee Feinberg, optical telescope element manager for the Webb telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
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Arrived at L2 looking all good.
Here’s the orbit
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That is so damn cool! A monumental achievement! I can’t wait to see what … well, it can see.
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