Space has long been considered by humanity as the final frontier; in hundreds of years when we’ve seen all that the earth has to give, humans will continue to look up to the stars in awe of what they contain. Although we won’t be able to scratch the surface of what lies beyond our planet in our lifetimes, our curiosity pushes us to create astounding technologies, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, that get us that much closer to understanding the cosmos.
A space telescope is a piece of technology that is sent into space to gather images and videos and send them back to earth, so we can gain a clearer understanding of planets, stars, nebulas and other celestial bodies. The most famous space telescope is the Hubble Space telescope, which has been orbiting Earth since 1990 and was developed by Edwin Hubble. The Hubble orbits about 330 miles above the earth’s atmosphere, allowing light from billions of light years away to reach it unaffected by pollution. The light is focused by precise mirrors and read by instruments that can make sense of all the information being absorbed.
The Hubble’s successor works in a similar way, by reflecting light from its mirrors to its sensors and readers, but with some key differences. Firstly, the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) has much larger mirrors that can take in huge amounts of light from all over the universe, the JWST also mostly reads infrared light as opposed to the Hubble primarily reading just the visible spectrum. Infrared light has a much longer wave length than visible light, and can travel through thick clouds of space dust which allows us to see things previously obscured. This gives us much clearer images, and a much wider range of what and where the JWST can view.
The JWSTs’ orbit is also substantially farther away than the Hubble’s, sitting at about 1 million miles away at langrage 2. A langrage point is a point in space where the gravitational forces of 2 bodies essentially balance out, allowing a small object to follow in a constant orbit. The JWST rests in L2 (langrage point 2) and orbits around the sun, allowing the telescope to save fuel and stay in commission for much longer. The added distance between the JWST and our sun also allows it to stay protected against the light and heat given off by our star, and its distance from the earth allows it to get clearer pictures since our planet’s atmosphere absorbs infrared light.
This telescope is a technological marvel and has demanded the brightest human minds to get it running. We may not come to understand the mysteries of our universe in our life times, but the continual efforts of scientists, astronomers, and engineers will have been an enormous stepping stone to give to our future generations, and maybe one day we will know the secrets every star holds.
