4th January, 2022
By: Haris Ahmad
The James Webb Telescope has been launched into space successfully, onboard the Ariane 5 rocket from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana on the 25th of December. The launch as well as the separation process of the telescope's launch went pretty smooth and the astronomy community is extremely joyous about that since this can prove to be a factor in increasing the life expectancy of this structure.
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https://esahubble.org/images/jwst_poster01/ |
The James Webb Telescope isn't just one normal telescope, it's a structure that took 30 years to create. Nevertheless, the making of this telescope was the largest, most expensive, and most challenging space-engineering project humans have ever attempted. This telescope is not the only of its kind, since humans also launched another telescope named Hubble in 1990. The Hubble telescope experienced some technical problems but, after it was fixed, it worked just fine and it went on the reimagine our perception of the universe. Though Hubble can see objects that are very distant, it cannot see things farther than a specific limit. This is where the James Webb telescope is brought in, which can take images in more detail and higher distance (~13.5 million light-years) and can see objects that hold secrets about the origin of the universe. This telescope will help us understand how the universe initially formed and how it evolved into the great vacuum it is today. Not only will this telescope help us see the past of this universe, but it will also help us predict the fate of many of the galaxies, stars, etc. This telescope has the ability to capture infra-red light that ultimately helps it significantly in finding objects much farther than the Hubble could see. Moreover, this telescope can also detect the presence of many gases in a planet's atmosphere which means that it can find traces of extraterrestrial life by detecting gases and molecules in the atmosphere that suggest their existence.
The main problem though is that the Sun also emits infra-red light so, how do we keep the infra-red light from the Sun away? Well, this telescope has a sun shield that blocks all the light from the Sun from reaching the telescope’s camera.
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https://www.space.com/news/live/james-webb-space-telescope-updates |
This telescope has been launched into orbit at a very far distance, at a point called the Second Lagrange point. This point in orbit is 1.5 million km away from the Earth though it is still in the zone of orbiting the Earth. The advantage of this orbit is that firstly, the light from the Earth and the Moon will no longer disturb the camera and secondly, the telescope will have a larger field of view.
