Scientists are filled with anticipation for the first full-color images from the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most powerful infrared space telescope to be unveiled in July.
“[The images] they will certainly deliver a long-awaited “wow” to astronomers and the public, “said Klaus Pontopidan, an astronomer at the U.S. Space Telescope Science Institute.
It took more than two decades to develop the James Webb Space Telescope at a cost of about $ 10 billion ($ 9.48 billion), and we hope that these first images will somehow justify all the work, time, and money.
A joint project between NASA, the US space agency and the European and Canadian space agencies, the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in December 2021.
It uses infrared to allow scientists to see deep into space. They want to see distant galaxies and stars and understand how they formed.
They also hope that the telescope will allow them to learn more about exoplanets – planets orbiting stars than our own sun – and look for signs of life.
What is infrared?
As with visible light, the type we can see with our eyes, infrared, is a form of electromagnetic radiation.
Electromagnetic radiation comes in different wavelengths that lie in a spectrum that begins with a radio at one end and includes microwave, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-ray and gamma rays.
The infrared spectrum itself is a large part of the electromagnetic spectrum and is divided into near infrared, medium infrared and far infrared.
If you’ve watched movies like Predator, the documentary series Planet Earth, or the performance of Thirty Seconds to Mars at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards, you’ll be familiar with infrared light and some of its applications.
All of the above examples use thermal cameras that capture infrared light.
Thermal cameras are also used at airports to measure people’s body temperature, which rises when you get a fever, such as a SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Some snakes, such as vipers, pythons, and boas, have special “pit” organs that can detect infrared radiation – or body heat – from their prey.
How do infrared thermal cameras work?
Anything above absolute zero (-273.15 degrees Celsius / -459.67 degrees Fahrenheit), whether alive or inanimate, emits infrared radiation – this includes you and the chair you are sitting in.
Even if we cannot see the object with our eyes, it will emit heat radiation. We can detect this infrared radiation and then convert this data into an image, using different colors to illustrate the intensity of the infrared radiation. And this creates a contour with detailed outlines of the object.
The James Webb Space Telescope will provide the sharpest images of deep space to date
This is similar to the way infrared telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope create images from space.
Why use the infrared connection of the James Webb Space Telescope?
Astronomers need infrared rays to be able to see the earliest stars and galaxies.
Infrared allows us to see dust through clouds that would otherwise block our view.
Dust clouds are where stars and planets are born, and being able to see through them will help us better understand how these stars and planets form.
The James Webb Space Telescope has a massive mirror to capture light from distant stars and planets.
The mirror is six times larger than that used by its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope must be able to see objects that are 10 to 100 times fainter than what Hubble can see, and make much sharper and more detailed infrared images than any previous telescope of its kind.
A new era in infrared rays
Infrared was discovered in 1800 by German-born British astronomer William Herschel, one of the main astronomers behind the discovery of Uranus.
Herschel used a prism and a thermometer to measure how different colors of light affect temperature, and noticed that the largest increase in temperature was in a region that became known as infrared.
The James Webb Space Telescope launches in December from the European Spaceport in French Guiana
There have been many more discoveries and technological improvements since then, including the first discovery of infrared radiation from the moon in 1856.
In 1878 came the invention of the bolometer, an infrared measuring device that was used in an updated form at the Herschel Space Observatory until 2013.
Infrared detectors continue to improve their sensitivity and accuracy, allowing scientists to detect infrared light from planets such as Jupiter and Saturn.
The James Webb Space Telescope will now add to this rich history by looking back in time than ever and in unprecedented detail.
If we’re lucky, this will reveal what the universe looked like just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
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Looking back at Hubble’s best images
Computer error resolved
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope failed to send images between June 13 and July 15, 2021. A faulty computer memory system shut down the telescope. Only retired NASA experts were able to get him to work again. For more than three decades, Hubble has provided compelling images of distant stars and galaxies.
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Looking back at Hubble’s best images
The stars are born
This is one of the most photogenic examples of the many turbulent stellar nurseries the Hubble Space Telescope has observed in its lifetime. The portrait depicts the giant nebula NGC 2014 and its neighbor NGC 2020, which together form part of a huge star-forming region in the Great Magellanic Cloud. This Milky Way satellite galaxy is approximately 163,000 light-years away.
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Looking back at Hubble’s best images
Better than Star Wars
Just when a new episode of Star Wars hit theaters in 2015, Hubble took this picture of a cosmic lightsaber. The celestial structure is about 1300 light-years away. This is the birth of a stellar system – two cosmic jets radiating outward from a newborn star and a little interstellar dust. The space telescope takes breathtaking pictures. Here are a few more…
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Looking back at Hubble’s best images
Eyes in space
Since 1990, the king of all space telescopes has orbited the Earth at speeds of more than 17,000 miles per hour (27,000 kilometers per hour) and altitudes of 340 miles (550 kilometers). Hubble is 11 meters (36 feet) long and weighs 11 metric tons (12.2 US tons), making it comparable in weight and size to a school bus.
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Looking back at Hubble’s best images
Space bubble detection
Hubble helped us understand the birth of stars and planets, roughly determine the age of the universe, and study the nature of dark matter. Here we see a giant gas ball created by a supernova explosion.
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Looking back at Hubble’s best images
Transient colors
Different gases emit all kinds of different colors. Red, for example, is a sign of sulfur. Green is hydrogen. And blue is oxygen.
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Looking back at Hubble’s best images
Hubble needs glasses
However, the first photos sent by Hubble were a disaster, as its main mirror was ground to the wrong shape. In 1993, the Endeavor space shuttle took experts to Hubble to fix the problem by giving him a pair of glasses. This was just one of five updates the telescope has received over the years, the last being in 2009.
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Looking back at Hubble’s best images
Space kindergarten
Hubble took this amazing picture in December 2009. The Blue Dots are very young stars, only a few million years old. This kindergarten of stars is located in the Great Magellanic Cloud, a nearby galaxy and a satellite of our Milky Way.
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Looking back at Hubble’s best images
butterfly?
How about this snapshot from space? No one really knows what exactly Hubble had in his lens here, but that doesn’t mean the shot is less stunning. This image is just one of more than 30,000 that Hubble has taken for centuries.
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Looking back at Hubble’s best images
Divine sombrero
This almost transcendent photograph is – like most Hubble images – a composition of many single frames. The Sombrero Galaxy is a seamless spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo and is only 28 million light-years from Earth.
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Looking back at Hubble’s best images
Hubble in the flesh
The telescope is named after the American astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble (1889-1953). He was the first person to notice that the universe was expanding. With this discovery, he paved the way for our current cosmological understanding of the Big Bang as the initiator of the universe.
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Looking back at Hubble’s best images
Pillars of creation
These columnar structures are located in the Eagle Nebula, about 7,000 light-years from Earth. They are documented by Hubble and have received worldwide recognition under the name “Pillars of Creation”.
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Looking back at Hubble’s best images
In the starting blocks
Hubble gets strong again. However, due to its constantly sinking orbit, the telescope could re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere in 2024 and burn out. But its successor has already been determined: James Webb, who is being tested in a thermal vacuum chamber here, is scheduled to be released this year. His workplace will be about 1.5 million kilometers (932,000 miles) from Earth.
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Looking back at Hubble’s best images
Cosmic smile
This, by the way, is another of Hubble’s creations – a cosmic smile! The easy explanation? It is made by bending the light.
Author: Judith Hartle (glb)
Edited by: Zulfikar Abani
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