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‘Great Opportunity’: Lehi and Silicon Slopes react to $11B investment from Texas Instruments – KSL.com
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Emerson Electric Bids to Buy National Instruments for Nearly $7 Billion
Emerson Electric Co.
EMR -6.82%
has disclosed a nearly $7 billion offer to acquire
National Instruments Corp.
NATI 10.79%
, which it said it has been trying to buy for more than eight months.
Emerson, a St. Louis-based technology and engineering company, said it was offering $53 a share in cash for National Instruments, which it said represents an enterprise value of $7.6 billion. The offer represents a 32% premium over National Instruments’ closing price from last Thursday, the day before the Texas-based equipment and instrumentation company said its board was evaluating strategic alternatives and had already been approached by potential acquirers.
Emerson’s public proposal comes eight months after National Instruments rejected its offer for an acquisition at $48 a share, the company said. Emerson upped its bid to $53 a share in November, but now claims National Instruments has continued to spurn its advances.
National Instruments confirmed Tuesday that it had received Emerson’s offer but said it remains committed to the strategic review process it announced on Friday.
By making the offer public, Emerson is hoping to win over shareholders who until now “have been unaware of this opportunity to realize an immediate cash premium,” Chief Executive
Lal Karsanbhai
said Tuesday in a conference call.
“Emerson urges NI shareholders to engage with their board to ensure this public strategic review process is not merely another delay tactic,” he said.
National Instruments’ shares jumped more than 10% to $52.04 by the close of the Tuesday market. Emerson’s shares meanwhile fell almost 7% to a low of nearly $91 in one of their steepest drops since June 2020, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Emerson said that picking up National Instruments’ portfolio of electronic test and measurement offerings would bolster its automation business while also adding to its adjusted earnings within the first year. The company isn’t putting any financing conditions on the deal, saying it can fund the transaction with cash on hand and existing lines of credit.
On a call with analysts, the company detailed eight months of snubs from the National Instruments board that started in May, when Emerson said it reached out for an in-person meeting about a potential deal and was instead offered a phone call with management. Emerson sent a formal letter soon after with its all-cash $48-per-share offer, but National Instruments turned it down, the company said.
National Instruments continued to rebuff offers to negotiate privately in the months that followed, Emerson said.
Emerson also noted that National Instruments purchased more than two million of its own shares at an average weighted price of $40.25 during that time. Mr. Karsanbhai criticized the company on Tuesday for launching one of its largest-ever buybacks for a per-share price that was well below Emerson’s offer.
Emerson reached out with its improved offer on Nov. 3 to buy National Instruments for $53 a share, which marked a 45% premium to the company’s share price at market close that day. The National Instruments board responded at the time that it had formed a working group to evaluate the proposal and weigh its strategic options, but otherwise refused to engage with Emerson, Emerson said.
National Instruments said Tuesday that it welcomes Emerson’s participation in its strategic review process but also thinks that negotiating exclusively with the company “would be detrimental to shareholders.”
“NI notes Emerson’s expressed disappointment in this effort to maximize NI shareholder value,” the company said.
Write to Dean Seal at dean.seal@wsj.com
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One of Webb Space Telescope’s Primary Instruments Ready To See Cosmos in Over 2,000 Infrared Colors
This animation shows the path light will follow as it hits the primary James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) mirror, and is reflected to the secondary, and then in through the aft optics assembly where the tertiary and fine steering mirrors are. The light is then reflected and split and directed to the science instruments by pick-off mirrors. JWST is a three-mirror anastigmat telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
One of the 
The Image Behind the Spectrum. This is a test detector image from the NIRISS instrument operated in its single-object slitless spectroscopy (SOSS) mode while pointing at a bright star. Each color seen in the image corresponds to a specific infrared wavelength between 0.6 and 2.8 microns. The black lines seen on the spectra are the telltale signature of hydrogen atoms present in the star. NIRISS is a contribution from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to the Webb project that provides unique observational capabilities that complement its other onboard instruments. Credit: NASA, CSA, and NIRISS team/Loic Albert, University of Montreal
“I’m so excited and thrilled to think that we’ve finally reached the end of this two-decade-long journey of Canada’s contribution to the mission. All four NIRISS modes are not only ready, but the instrument as a whole is performing significantly better than we predicted. I am pinching myself at the thought that we are just days away from the start of science operations, and in particular from NIRISS probing its first exoplanet atmospheres,” said René Doyon, principal investigator for NIRISS, as well as Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor, at the University of Montreal.
With NIRISS postlaunch commissioning activities concluded, the Webb team will continue to focus on checking off the remaining five modes on its other instruments.
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NASA’s work to align the James Webb Space Telescope is extending to more instruments
After James Webb Space Telescope officials released a stunning image of a single star, the team is ready to get other telescope parts in line with the observatory’s mirrors.
The $10 billion telescope successfully aligned with its near-infrared camera (NIRCam), as the star image showed. But the observatory still has four other instruments that it must be able to switch between with perfect alignment to obtain sharp images of distant objects.
The work will begin with the guiding instrument (called the Fine Guidance Sensor or FGS) and then extend to the other three instruments, a NASA update stated Thursday (March 17). Webb engineers expect that this process, called “multi-instrument multi-field alignment,” will take six weeks to complete.
Live updates: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope mission
Related: How the James Webb Space Telescope works in pictures
Webb should complete its commissioning period around June, six months after launching on Dec. 25 on an ambitious mission to observe the universe from deep space and gather data on objects ranging from exoplanets to galaxies.
Switching between cameras in space is complicated, but the telescope will eventually be able to use multiple instruments at the same time, according to the update, which was written by Jonathan Gardner, Webb deputy senior project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
Ground-based telescopes have the advantage of having engineers available on site to potentially remove instruments not needed in between investigations. However, on Webb and other space telescopes, the procedure is different.
“All the cameras see the sky at the same time; to switch a target from one camera to another, we repoint the telescope to put the target into the field of view of the other instrument,” Gardner wrote.
The goal of the new alignment, Gardner said, is to “provide a good focus and sharp images in all the instruments” while knowing the relative positions of each instrument’s field of view.
Last weekend, Gardner continued, engineers learned the positions of three near-infrared instruments in relation to the FGS, and updated that information in the software used for telescope pointing.
FGS reached its own milestone recently, which was finishing “fine guide mode.” That occurs when the guider zeroes in on a guide star to the instrument’s highest possible precision. Additionally, engineers are taking “dark” images to see what happens when the instrument has no light reaching it, which allows personnel to more precisely calibrate the instrument.
The last instrument to be aligned will be the mid-infrared instrument (MIRI) as it is awaiting a cryogenic cooler’s ability to bring it to its operating temperature of minus 448 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 267 degrees Celsius.)
Gardner also explained how the instruments will work together to look at a target.
“With parallel science exposures, when we point one instrument at a target, we can read out another instrument at the same time,” he said. “The parallel observations don’t see the same point in the sky, so they provide what is essentially a random sample of the universe.”
Parallel data, he concluded, allows scientists to “determine the statistical properties of the galaxies that are detected. In addition, for programs that want to map a large area, much of the parallel images will overlap, increasing the efficiency of the valuable Webb dataset.”
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
Power On! Webb Space Telescope Turns On Instruments
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Northrup Grumman
Now begins the process of aligning all 18 mirror segments so that they work together as one.
Since the arrival of 
The James Webb Space Telescope has reached it’s parking spot in space and has successfully powered up all of it’s instruments. Within the week, the UArizona-led NIRCam will be used to align the 18 gold-plated mirror segments to work together as one giant mirror.. Credit: NASA GSFC/CIL/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez
Marcia Rieke, a University of Arizona Regents Professor of Astronomy, is principal investigator for NIRCam. Her husband, George Rieke, also a Regents Professor of Astronomy, is the science team lead for MIRI.
While MIRI and some components of the telescope’s other instruments were powered on in the weeks after Webb’s December 25 launch, the final three instruments – including NIRCam – turned on in the past few days.
After the powered-on instruments undergo initial checks, the mission operations team’s next major step is to turn off instrument heaters. The heaters keep critical optics warm to protect them from water and ice condensation. As the instruments meet predefined criteria for overall temperatures, the team will shut off the heaters to allow the instruments to cool to final temperatures that will allow the infrared detectors to see faint objects in the night sky.
A sensor array for the NIRCam instrument, designed and tested by Marcia Rieke’s research group at Steward Observatory. For the sensors to detect infrared light without too much noise in the data, Webb and its instruments must be kept as cool as possible. Credit: Marcia Rieke
When NIRCam reaches about minus 244 degrees 
Since the 18 mirror segments are not working in tandem yet, the alignment process will first create an image of 18 random, blurry points of light as the telescope points at star HD84406.
For the first few weeks of mirror alignment, the team will keep NIRCam trained on the star while making microscopic adjustments to Webb’s mirror segments. Ultimately, that collection of 18 blurry dots will become a focused image of a single star.
Cooling of the telescope and instruments will continue over the next month, with NIRCam ultimately reaching nearly minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
NASA has allotted 13% of Webb’s total observing time to UArizona astronomers. This gives the university more viewing time than any other astronomy center in the world. The National Science Foundation has ranked the University of Arizona No. 1 in astronomy and astrophysics research expenditures each year since 1988.
5 Things to Know About The James Webb Space Telescope Before It Launches
The James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful space observatory ever built, is finally set for launch in late December after decades of waiting.
An engineering marvel, it will help answer fundamental questions about the Universe, peering back in time 13 billion years. Here are five things to know.
1. Giant gold mirror
The telescope’s centerpiece is its enormous primary mirror, a concave structure 21.5 feet (6.5 meters) wide and made up of 18 smaller hexagonal mirrors. They’re made from beryllium coated with gold, optimized for reflecting infrared light from the far reaches of the universe.
The observatory also has four scientific instruments, which together fulfill two main purposes: imaging cosmic objects, and spectroscopy – breaking down light into separate wavelengths to study the physical and chemical properties of cosmic matter.
The mirror and instruments are protected by a five-layer sunshield, which is shaped like a kite and built to unfurl to the size of a tennis court.
Its membranes are composed of kapton, a material known for its high heat resistance and stability under a wide temperature range – both vital, since the Sun-facing side of the shield will get as hot as 230 degrees Fahrenheit (110 degrees Celsius), while the other side will reach lows of -394F.
The telescope also has a “spacecraft bus” containing its subsystems for electrical power, propulsion, communications, orientation, heating, and data handling; all told, Webb weighs around as much as a school bus.
2. Million-mile journey
The telescope will be placed in orbit about a million miles from Earth, roughly four times the distance of our planet from the Moon.
Unlike Hubble, the current premier space telescope that revolves around the planet, Webb will orbit the Sun.
It will remain directly behind Earth, from the point of view of the Sun, allowing it to remain on our planet’s night side. Webb’s sunshield will always be between the mirror and our star.
It will take about a month to reach this region in space, known as the second Lagrange point, or L2. While astronauts have been sent to repair Hubble, no humans have ever traveled as far as Webb’s planned orbit.
3. High-tech origami
Because the telescope is too large to fit into a rocket’s nose cone in its operational configuration, it has to be transported folded, origami-style. Unfurling is a complex and challenging task, the most daunting deployment NASA has ever attempted.
About 30 minutes after take-off, the communications antenna and solar panels supplying it with energy will be deployed.
Then comes the unfurling of the sunshield, hitherto folded like an accordion, beginning on the sixth day, well after having passed the Moon. Its thin membranes will be guided by a complex mechanism involving 400 pulleys and 1,312 feet of cable.
During the second week will finally come the mirror’s turn to open. Once in its final configuration, the instruments will need to cool and be calibrated, and the mirrors very precisely adjusted.
After six months the telescope will be ready to go.
4. Life, the universe, and everything
Webb has two primary scientific missions, which together will account for more than 50 percent of its observation time. First, explore the early phases of cosmic history, looking back in time to only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
Astrologers want to see how the very first stars and galaxies formed, and how they evolve over time.
Its second major goal is the discovery of exoplanets, meaning planets outside the solar system. It will also investigate the potential for life on those worlds by studying their atmospheres.
The great promise of Webb lies in its infrared capacity.
Unlike the ultraviolet and visible light Hubble mostly operates in, the longer wavelengths of infrared penetrate dust more easily, allowing the early universe shrouded in clouds to come more clearly into view.
Infrared also lets scientists go further back in time because of a phenomenon called redshifting. Light from objects farther away is stretched as the universe expands, towards the infrared end of the spectrum.
Also planned are closer observations, in our solar system, of Mars and of Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon.
5. Decades in the making
Astronomers began debating the telescope that should succeed Hubble in the 1990s, with Webb’s construction beginning in 2004.
Launch has been pushed back several times, initially penciled for 2007, then 2018…mainly because of the complexities associated with development.
The observatory is the result of an immense international collaboration and integrates Canadian and European instruments.
More than 10,000 people worked on the project, with the budget eventually snowballing to around $10 billion.
The mission is set to last for at least five years, but hopefully 10 or more.
© Agence France-Presse