WGNO

Kenner Planetarium celebrates Webb telescope launch

The Kepler mission has discovered 1,284 new planets. Of these newly discovered planets, nine orbit in the habitable zone of their star and nearly 550 are possibly rocky planets roughly around the same size as Earth.

KENNER, La. (WGNO) — On Thursday, Mayor Ben Zahn announced that a special day of free programming will take place on Saturday, Nov. 20, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Kenner Planetarium in Rivertown.

The event will happen at 2020 Fourth St., to celebrate the scheduled Dec. 18 launch of the largest and most powerful telescope ever built.

The James Webb Space Telescope will orbit the sun nearly 1 million miles away from Earth.

At that distance, experts say the powerful telescope can peer back in time nearly 13.5 billion years to observe the first-born galaxies in our universe.

Saturday’s free event includes planetarium shows, a guest speaker, arts and crafts activities in the
Rivertown Space Science Complex and solar telescope viewing with members of the Pontchartrain
Astronomy Society.

For more information, call (504) 468-7231.