Despite complaints, NASA won't rename James Webb Space Telescope: report NASA's James Webb Space Telescope looks squeaky clean at spaceport for December launch (photos) There are over 300 ways that the new James Webb Space Telescope could fail, NASA says This can help clue scientists in as to what elements or chemicals might have created that spectrum. With these tools, Webb "can do what we call imaging spectroscopy," Pontoppidan said, "where it can take an image, but it will take a spectrum and every pixel of the image as well." In imaging spectroscopy, there is information on the spectrum of wavelengths present in each tiny piece of the image. These include the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and the Fine Guidance Sensor/Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (FGS-NIRISS). Webb is equipped with four scientific instruments to help it make its observations. It can detect objects 10 billion times fainter than the faintest stars visible with no telescope, or 10 to100 times fainter than what Hubble can observe. Webb was designed to be able to "see" the first stars and galaxies that ever formed in the early universe. Its larger mirror also gives it more surface area to collect light, enabling the scope to peer even farther out into space, which essentially allows scientists to look "back in time," at the universe billions of years in the past. penny 24 miles (40 km) away.ĭespite this similarity, Webb has a much larger mirror - 21.3 feet (6.5 m) wide, compared to 7.8 feet (2.4 m) - cutting-edge detectors and is designed to see deeper into the infrared spectrum than Hubble.īy observing in infrared, Webb will allow scientists to see much farther out into the universe, NASA has explained. According to NASA, Webb's resolution would allow it to see the details of an object the size of a U.S. "Webb images will appear just as sharp as Hubble's do," the sheet reads. "Webb's angular resolution, or sharpness of vision, will be the same as Hubble's," according to the fact sheet. Hubble has provided the world with stunning images for decades and has similar sharpness to Webb. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)) The power of infrared Rising like a giant seahorse from turbulent waves of dust and gas is the Horsehead Nebula, otherwise known as Barnard 33. This Hubble image, captured and released to celebrate the telescope’s 23rd year in orbit, shows part of the sky in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter) in infrared light. Related: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has a shiny giant mirror made of gold hexagons. "But as it turns out, actually, if you just go a little bit further out into infrared … the dust itself lights up in thermal light. "I think maybe there was some concern that, you know, you don't want images that end up looking wispy," Pontoppidan said. Some gas and dust features become a bit wispy as you start to edge into the infrared light part of the spectrum, Pontoppidan explained. "The stars themselves fade away they get fainter and fainter go to longer wavelength, but interstellar clouds go brighter and brighter and brighter." "It will look very, very different than Hubble," Pontoppidan said. "I think it'll be fantastic," Pontoppidan said, "but it's very difficult to predict what it will look like," as this will be the first space telescope mission of its kind. Kornmesser)īy observing in infrared, Webb will capture uniquely beautiful images. Beauty in infraredĬomparison of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope's respective mirrors. While Hubble observes light at primarily optical and ultraviolet wavelengths, Webb is designed to detect primarily infrared light. But, while better in ways, Webb's images will also be fundamentally "different, because it's different wavelengths," Pontoppidan said. "It will take amazing images they will be better than what Hubble did," Klaus Pontoppidan, Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said during a news conference in May. Hubble is pretty close to us in low Earth orbit, but Webb will travel out much farther, to a gravitationally stable spot 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth known as the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (L2).Īdditionally, while both Hubble and Webb are large space telescopes (though Webb is considerably bigger), the two actually "see" the universe very differently. But despite a handful of glitches over the years, Hubble's science instruments are still going strong, and the two big scopes are set to observe together (albeit far apart from one another) in space. Webb is often described as Hubble's replacement or successor.
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