we’re building the James Webb Space
Telescope in order to be the scientific
successor to Hubble everybody knows and
loves Hubble Hubble is amazing but there
are some things it just wasn’t designed
to do when there are many ways in which
we’ve pushed Hubble to its limits the
Webb telescope will be by far the
largest telescope we’ve ever sent into
space we’re building this telescope
because it will be much better and more
powerful than what we have and so of
course why would you need a better and
more powerful telescope it’s to make
discoveries of things you can only guess
about nature is always full of surprises
and very rarely do we predict things the
way they actually are one of the most
exciting things about this telescope is
the opportunity for us to see those very
first galaxies that were in the early
universe
the James Webb Space Telescope has four
primary science goals the first of those
is to detect the very first galaxies
that were born after the Big Bang the
second is to see how galaxies form and
assemble over time and how their black
holes grow the third science theme is to
study how stars and primitive planetary
systems are born and then the fourth is
to learn more about planets and the
origins of life the primary mirror of
the Webb telescope is about 21 feet
across and the mirror segments are made
out of beryllium which is a very strong
lightweight metal that holds its shape
very well under large temperature
changes so the 18 mirror segments have
about a golf ball-sized worth of gold
that’s spread very thin across all of
the mirrors the reason we use gold to
coat through the mirror is so that the
telescope will be highly reflective in
infrared light the biggest questions we
have in astronomy right now really
demand an infrared telescope
infrared light is sent out by objects
that are too cool to emit visible light
things that are very very far away like
the earliest galaxies they send out
visible light but it’s stretched out by
the expanding universe so that it
becomes infrared by the time we receive
it so for these two main reasons we want
to study infrared is even a third one
which is that the infrared is able to go
around the dust grains that block our
view of dusty clouds so we can see
through the dust clouds inside to see
stars being born so all of these reasons
make infrared a really wonderful open
frontier for science now the Webb
telescope is going quite far from Earth
it’s going to an area we call the
Lagrange point l2 so it hangs out there
about a million miles away from us to
about four times away as the moon is the
Webb telescope will be very folded up
before it goes up into space on the long
the way shortly after launch we will
begin to unfold it this all takes place
over the course of a couple of weeks it
will be about the size of a tennis court
the Sun shield is and it’s about four
stories tall so in comparison to Hubble
for example Hubble is about the size of
a school bus Webb is more the size of
like a 737 so it’s huge in building and
designing and the whole process leading
up to launching the telescope there are
well over a thousand people that have
been involved in that so the Webb
telescope is an international
partnership between NASA the European
Space Agency and the Canadian Space
Agency
there’s a whole world of scientists
waiting to get the data from this
telescope so it will affect not only
astronomers now but also the kind of
astronomers of the future those kids
that are in high school now or college
will be able to use data from this
telescope one of the reasons I love
astronomy so much is that it gets to the
heart of our big questions of humanity’s
big questions you know where do we come
from and how did we get here and are we
alone and how does the universe work
well for me
building the equipment that can make a
great discovery has always been like one
of the most honorable things one could
ever do and to me this James Webb
telescope is the pinnacle of what I
could imagine working on in my
professional life I can’t imagine
anything better
Telescope in order to be the scientific
successor to Hubble everybody knows and
loves Hubble Hubble is amazing but there
are some things it just wasn’t designed
to do when there are many ways in which
we’ve pushed Hubble to its limits the
Webb telescope will be by far the
largest telescope we’ve ever sent into
space we’re building this telescope
because it will be much better and more
powerful than what we have and so of
course why would you need a better and
more powerful telescope it’s to make
discoveries of things you can only guess
about nature is always full of surprises
and very rarely do we predict things the
way they actually are one of the most
exciting things about this telescope is
the opportunity for us to see those very
first galaxies that were in the early
universe
the James Webb Space Telescope has four
primary science goals the first of those
is to detect the very first galaxies
that were born after the Big Bang the
second is to see how galaxies form and
assemble over time and how their black
holes grow the third science theme is to
study how stars and primitive planetary
systems are born and then the fourth is
to learn more about planets and the
origins of life the primary mirror of
the Webb telescope is about 21 feet
across and the mirror segments are made
out of beryllium which is a very strong
lightweight metal that holds its shape
very well under large temperature
changes so the 18 mirror segments have
about a golf ball-sized worth of gold
that’s spread very thin across all of
the mirrors the reason we use gold to
coat through the mirror is so that the
telescope will be highly reflective in
infrared light the biggest questions we
have in astronomy right now really
demand an infrared telescope
infrared light is sent out by objects
that are too cool to emit visible light
things that are very very far away like
the earliest galaxies they send out
visible light but it’s stretched out by
the expanding universe so that it
becomes infrared by the time we receive
it so for these two main reasons we want
to study infrared is even a third one
which is that the infrared is able to go
around the dust grains that block our
view of dusty clouds so we can see
through the dust clouds inside to see
stars being born so all of these reasons
make infrared a really wonderful open
frontier for science now the Webb
telescope is going quite far from Earth
it’s going to an area we call the
Lagrange point l2 so it hangs out there
about a million miles away from us to
about four times away as the moon is the
Webb telescope will be very folded up
before it goes up into space on the long
the way shortly after launch we will
begin to unfold it this all takes place
over the course of a couple of weeks it
will be about the size of a tennis court
the Sun shield is and it’s about four
stories tall so in comparison to Hubble
for example Hubble is about the size of
a school bus Webb is more the size of
like a 737 so it’s huge in building and
designing and the whole process leading
up to launching the telescope there are
well over a thousand people that have
been involved in that so the Webb
telescope is an international
partnership between NASA the European
Space Agency and the Canadian Space
Agency
there’s a whole world of scientists
waiting to get the data from this
telescope so it will affect not only
astronomers now but also the kind of
astronomers of the future those kids
that are in high school now or college
will be able to use data from this
telescope one of the reasons I love
astronomy so much is that it gets to the
heart of our big questions of humanity’s
big questions you know where do we come
from and how did we get here and are we
alone and how does the universe work
well for me
building the equipment that can make a
great discovery has always been like one
of the most honorable things one could
ever do and to me this James Webb
telescope is the pinnacle of what I
could imagine working on in my
professional life I can’t imagine
anything better
Please follow and like us: