![]() Read on to explore some of the telescope’s most exciting early finds. Most of the results so far come from early-release science programs and proposals from the first cycle of science operations (Cycle 1). But sometimes this pattern is altered to show details in a more revealing light.Īlthough JWST launched in late 2021, it took the space observatory 29 days to reach its home orbiting the L2 Lagrange point about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth, and an additional five months for scientists and engineers to get the telescope ready for its debut. In many cases, scientists map longer infrared wavelengths to the red end of the visible spectrum and shorter wavelengths toward the blue, mimicking how the eye operates. ![]() So, the colors in JWST images don’t match what the eye would see. The dust that envelops infant suns scatters visible light, hiding what lies within from our eyes, but it lets infrared radiation largely pass through. The same holds true for newly forming stars. Peering into the infrared is the only way to observe these young galaxies from Earth’s vicinity. These distant objects emit ultraviolet and visible light, but the expansion of the universe shifts this radiation to longer infrared wavelengths. Observing in the infrared allows astronomers to see galaxies that existed less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Perhaps surprisingly, in its intended infrared domain, JWST generally won’t resolve finer details than Hubble achieves in optical light: Although resolution increases with mirror size, it also diminishes with wavelength. ![]() Hubble’s optics are optimized to record radiation from 0.09 micrometer (in the ultraviolet) to 2.5 micrometers (in the near-infrared), with the majority of its sensitivity centered on visible light. The space telescope can view wavelengths from 0.6 to 28.5 micrometers, from the red end of the visible spectrum to the mid-infrared. Hustak (STScI))īut JWST’s sensitivity to infrared light is the real game-changer. (Credit: Astronomy: Roen Kelly, after NASA/ESA/L. This stretches out the wavelength of light as it travels through our expanding universe. As space expands, stars and galaxies maintain their size, but the distance between them grows. Cosmological redshift is the stretching of light to longer (redder) wavelengths by the expansion of the universe itself. This colossus gathers more than six times as much light as the Hubble Space Telescope’s 2.4-meter mirror, so it can record light from objects six times faster than its predecessor. First and foremost is its size: JWST features a 6.5-meter mirror composed of 18 gold-plated hexagonal segments. The newest space telescope comes with significant advantages over any previous mission. ![]() After more than a year in space, JWST is starting to turn those dreams into reality. Those dreams belonged to astronomers hoping to peer farther into space than ever before, to a time when the first galaxies formed to penetrate dust clouds to witness the birth of stars and to probe the atmospheres of exoplanets to see if they might support life. When an Ariane 5 rocket lifted off from French Guiana on Christmas Day 2021, it carried a cargo of dreams: the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). In this JWST view, hotter gas glows yellow-white and cooler gas appears more rust-colored. The massive blue-white stars at the center of the Tarantula Nebula (NGC 2070) in the Large Magellanic Cloud have carved a huge cavity into their gaseous surroundings. ![]()
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