The James Webb Space Telescope and why it is special

Today we will talk about the latest inventions of science, which will reveal to us a lot about the universe that we know little about but do not worry, my friend, this article will result in many articles in the future, so it must be noted before delving into the lines of the article.

So let’s understand first what this Telescope at first and then we will show why science sees it as so special and important for humans,

and in the next articles we will show part by part information about our foreign friends “Aliens” so don’t feel bored with this article because it will open other articles to show some important information so don’t hurry up.

Shall we start, keeping the focus?

What is the James Webb Space Telescope?

• The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope currently conducting infrared astronomy. As the largest optical telescope in space, it is equipped with high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments, allowing it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope. This enables investigations across many fields of astronomy and cosmology, such as the observation of the first stars, the formation of the first galaxies, and detailed atmospheric characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets.

• The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) led JWST's design and development and partnered with two main agencies: the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Maryland managed telescope development, while the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore on the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University currently operates JWST. The primary contractor for the project was Northrop Grumman. The telescope is named after James E. Webb, who was the administrator of NASA from 1961 to 1968 during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.

• The James Webb Space Telescope was launched on 25 December 2021 on an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, and arrived at the Sun–Earth L2 Lagrange point in January 2022. The first JWST image was released to the public via a press conference on 11 July 2022.

• JWST's primary mirror consists of 18 hexagonal mirror segments made of gold-plated beryllium, which combined create a 6.5-meter-diameter (21 ft) mirror, compared with Hubble's 2.4 m (7 ft 10 in). This gives JWST a light-collecting area of about 25 square meters, about six times that of Hubble. Unlike Hubble, which observes in the near ultraviolet and visible (0.1 to 0.8 μm), and near-infrared (0.8–2.5 μm)[13] spectra, JWST observes a lower frequency range, from long-wavelength visible light (red) through mid-infrared (0.6–28.3 μm). The telescope must be kept extremely cold, below 50 K (−223 °C; −370 °F), such that the infrared light emitted by the telescope itself does not interfere with the collected light. It is deployed in a solar orbit near the Sun–Earth L2 Lagrange point, about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 mi) from Earth, where its five-layer sun shield protects it from warming by the Sun, Earth, and Moon.

• Initial designs for the telescope then named the Next Generation Space Telescope, began in 1996. Two concept studies were commissioned in 1999, for a potential launch in 2007 and a US$1 billion budget. The program was plagued with enormous cost overruns and delays; a major redesign in 2005 led to the current approach, with construction completed in 2016 at a total cost of US$10 billion. The media, scientists, and engineers remarked upon the high-stakes nature of the launch and the telescope’s complexity.

Some Features of this Telescope :

• The mass of the James Webb Space Telescope is about half that of the Hubble Space Telescope. The JWST has a 6.5-meter (21 ft)-diameter gold-coated beryllium primary mirror made up of 18 separate hexagonal mirrors. The mirror has a polished area of 26.3 m2 (283 sq ft), of which 0.9 m2 (9.7 sq ft) is obscured by the secondary support struts, giving a total collecting area of 25.4 m2 (273 sq ft). This is over six times larger than the collecting area of Hubble's 2.4-meter (7.9 ft) diameter mirror, which has a collecting area of 4.0 m2 (43 sq ft). The mirror has a gold coating to provide infrared reflectivity and this is covered by a thin layer of glass for durability.

• JWST is designed primarily for near-infrared astronomy, but can also see orange and red visible light, as well as the mid-infrared region, depending on the instrument. It can detect objects up to 100 times fainter than Hubble can, and objects much earlier in the history of the universe, back to redshift z≈20 (about 180 million years cosmic time after the Big Bang). For comparison, the earliest stars are thought to have formed between z≈30 and z≈20 (100–180 million years cosmic time), and the first galaxies may have formed around redshift z≈15 (about 270 million years cosmic time). Hubble is unable to see further back than very early reionization at about z≈11.1 (galaxy GN-z11, 400 million years cosmic time).

The design emphasizes the near to mid-infrared for several reasons:

1. high-redshift (very early and distant) objects have their visible emissions shifted into the infrared, and therefore their light can be observed today only via infrared astronomy;
2. infrared light passes more easily through dust clouds than visible light;
3. colder objects such as debris disks and planets emit most strongly in the infrared;
4. these infrared bands are difficult to study from the ground or by existing space telescopes such as Hubble.

• Rough plot of Earth's atmospheric absorption (or opacity) to various wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, including visible light

• Ground-based telescopes must look through Earth's atmosphere, which is opaque in many infrared bands (see figure at right). Even where the atmosphere is transparent, many of the target chemical compounds, such as water, carbon dioxide, and methane, also exist in the Earth's atmosphere, vastly complicating analysis. Existing space telescopes such as Hubble cannot study these bands since their mirrors are insufficiently cool (the Hubble mirror is maintained at about 15 °C [288 K; 59 °F]) which means that the telescope itself radiates strongly in the relevant infrared bands.

• JWST can also observe objects in the Solar System at an angle of more than 85° from the Sun and has an apparent angular rate of motion of less than 0.03 arc seconds per second. This includes Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, their satellites, comets, asteroids, and minor planets at or beyond the orbit of Mars. JWST has the near-IR and mid-IR sensitivity to be able to observe virtually all known Kuiper Belt Objects. In addition, it can observe opportunistic and unplanned targets within 48 hours of a decision to do so, such as supernovae and gamma-ray bursts.

Q: All this is nice and I know I made you a headache with this so much scientific information but what makes this Telescope so special NASA said it’s a jump in human science.

A: The answer because this Telescope will be like a back door or magic window to understand what happened there in galaxies and how it changed with time and what happen we can’t see.

So we can say the Mission goals:

The James Webb Space Telescope has four key goals:

1. to search for light from the first stars and galaxies that formed in the universe after the Big Bang.
2. to study galaxy formation and evolution.
3. to understand star formation and planet formation.
4. to study planetary systems and the origins of life.

• The telescope will reveal the early days of the universe, about 13.8 billion years ago and a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Astronomers expect to conclude the formation of the first stars and galaxies. In addition, the telescope scans space in search of life on distant planets, that is, planets outside the solar system, and their geological components.

• The Webb telescope's strength lies in its use of infrared radiation. While Hubble mostly works with visible and ultraviolet light, Webb's infrared radiation can penetrate the universe more easily. In addition, astronomers can look at the past motion of stars using infrared light. 

• The Webb telescope will also study Mars and Jupiter's moon Europa, which is surrounded by an ice cap, in some detail. James Webb captured with spectroscopy, a technique that analyzes the light that can reveal detailed information about space objects, an image of the gas giant planet WASP-96 b discovered in 2014.

• This planet is about 1,150 light-years away from Earth, and its size is about half the size of Jupiter. It orbits its star in just 3.4 days.

• James Webb also took a picture of the Stephan Quintet, a group of galaxies 290 million light-years from Earth. And NASA noted that four of the five galaxies in Stephan's Quintet are "trapped within repeated, close shocks."

• Perhaps the most anticipated image is a picture taken by the telescope using a foreground galaxy cluster called SMACS 0723 as a kind of cosmic magnifying glass for the very faint and distant galaxies behind it.

• This technique, known as gravitational lensing, uses the mass of foreground galaxies to scatter the light of objects behind them, similar to what happens in eyeglasses.

In The End:

So as we see this Telescope can reach places humans can’t reach for now and at the same time show the planets can be ready to have life or already have Aliens there that’s why NASA sees it so important.

But the real question after this Telescope discovered two planets, now, can have life on it do you think my friends that these planets have a real life on them, do you think my friends we are alone in this universe or not, and if we the only creatures who live in planet then why all these galaxies.

It’s your turn, my friends, to say your opinion in the comments before we start our investigation about this topic in the next articles, and if have any topic want to know about it tells me in the comments too I will be glad.

Best Wishes For The Next Topic