Like a camera held in one's hand, the structure must remain as stable as possible to achieve the best shots.Īfter the first images, astronomers around the globe will get shares of time on the telescope, with projects selected competitively through a process in which applicants and selectors don't know each other's identities, to minimize bias. Webb's primary mirror is over 21 feet (6.5 meters) wide and is made up of 18 gold-coated mirror segments. The James Webb Space Telescope data is a treasure trove of material: what are we hoping to find Dust, disks, clusters and zodiacal light all on the wishlist. Launched on December 25th, 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope or JWST succeeds the highly successful Hubble telescope as NASAs flagship general purpose telescope in space. Here, it remains in a fixed position relative to the Earth and Sun, with minimal fuel required for course corrections.Ī wonder of engineering, the total project cost is estimated at $10 billion, making it one of the most expensive scientific platforms ever built, comparable to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Launched in December 2021 from French Guiana on an Ariane 5 rocket, Webb is orbiting the Sun at a distance of a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth, in a region of space called the second Lagrange point. Known as Webb's First Deep Field, it shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, which acts as a gravitational lens, bending light from more distant galaxies behind it towards the observatory, in a cosmic magnification effect. Known as Webb's First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail, as thousands of galaxiesincluding the faintest objects ever observed in the infraredappeared in Webb's view for the first time. One stunning shot released by the White House on Monday was overflowing with thousands of galaxies and features some of the faintest objects observed. Spectacular Webb telescope image shows a stellar death like never before Why the first Webb telescope image is so warped, twisted, and weird The powerful Webb telescope found water in this alien. The first image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. ? ? ? Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Northrop Grumman led the industry team for NASAs James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the largest, most complex and powerful space telescope ever built.
Please help us reach our next goal on YouTube by hitting subscribe.