- The James Webb Space Telescope is a spacecraft telescope designed to detect the most distant and coldest objects in the Universe.
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The James Webb Space Telescope
- It will also analyse far away potentially habitable planets and other cosmic events. The main goal of JWST is to surpass the range of the Hubble Telescope.
- It is named after a NASA administrator (James E. Webb) who headed the Apollo, Gemini and Mercury missions (1961-1968).
- NASA coordinated the development of JWST in association with the Canadian Space Agency and European Space Agency.
- The telescope was launched on December 25, 2021. Ariane 5 rocket carried the telescope to orbit from Kourou, French Guiana.
- It will provide better infrared sensitivity and image resolution over the Hubble Telescope. Viewing power is almost 100 times greater than all other major telescopes on and off the planet.
Goals of James Webb Space Telescope
- Detecting Light from the First Galaxies and Planets Formed After the Big Bang
- Observing the Formation of Galaxies
- Star Formation in Nebulae
- Observing Exo-planets
Uses of James Webb Space Telescope
- The James Webb Space Telescope is fundamentally designed for wider infrared astronomy.
- It can observe objects which are 100 times fainter than the threshold of the Hubble telescope.
- It can also detect red-orange visible light and mid-infrared range.
- It will allow astronomers to observe objects that existed earlier in the timeline of the Universe, much closer to the Big Bang.
- This unique infrared detector is designed to detect objects hidden in the mid-nearer infrared spectrum.
- Colder and darker objects also emit infrared light.
- The Hubble telescope is not designed for such an infrared spectrum.
- James Webb Space Telescope is arguably the best infrared observatory ever built.
- It will be able to avoid unwanted complications caused by water, methane and other compounds in the atmosphere.
- The James Webb Space Telescope could automate itself to analyse unplanned targets within the set time.
- It can also examine most of the objects in the Solar System, including all the satellites, planets, asteroids and comets.