How powerful is the James Webb telescope and where is it located?

The James Webb telescope is one of the most powerful in all history, its technology allows analyzing infrared radiation and understanding the origin of the universe.

The James Webb Telescope is the most powerful space telescope ever built by mankind. It is the result of an international collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). Used by astronomers around the world, this astronomical and space engineering instrument, It is located at a point between the Earth and the Sun..

The great power of the Webb telescope helps scientists to discover other worlds, such as exoplanets, learn facts about the life cycle of stars, create a fascinating image of the first dawn of the universe, and study the evolution of different galaxies over time.

The James Webb Telescope

The James Webb telescope in its phase prior to the final launch into space.

James Webb: studying other worlds

First of all, this unique telescope is allowing scientists Analyze all the planets of the Solar System, as well as other planetary systems with a detail never seen before. One of the objectives of the James We is to determine of what elements observed planets are composed and reveal whether the conditions of the planets are favorable for harboring life. What’s more, the telescope itself would even be capable of detecting signs of extraterrestrial life, the so-called «biofirmas». This is a task shared with other space missions and research, such as the International Space Station, which is visible from our planet. And it is that, there are not few people who consider how to see the International Space Station from Earth.

Thanks to his system for capture infrared radiation the Webb Space Telescope, allows scientists to also study planetary systems that are in the formation phase. These young systems, known at an astronomical level as “protoplanetary disks”, contain a powder that prevents and blocks the passage of visible light, Therefore, they can only be studied with instruments such as those of the Webb telescope: that is, instruments that capture infrared radiation. Something similar, but different, to what the NuSTAR, the NASA telescope in charge of taking “X-rays” of outer space.

Some of the first studies carried out by the James Webb telescope were the in-depth observation of celestial bodies like the moons of Jupiter, which would be the case of Europe, or of one of the saturn satellites, which would be the case of Enceladus. This study looked for traces of life on the satellites of Saturn and Jupiter. Europa and Enceladus are fascinating, and different, ocean satellites. The thick crust of ice they have hides a liquid ocean that releases water vapor from its cryovolcanoes. On Titan, another of Saturn’s moons, we have been able to see great methane lakes on the surface through the images captured by James Webb.

James Webb Telescope

Construction process of the James Webb telescope.

Since we launched this telescope into space, its power has allowed in the last decades that many astronomers discover thousands of exoplanets, that is: planets that orbit stars other than the Sun. All these planets differ quite a bit from each other: we can find some Earth-like, but much more gigantic, and some very similar to Jupiter, but much hotter.

James Webb Telescope: Studying the life cycle of stars.

During their life cycle, which can be millions of years, the Sun and other stars undergo extreme changes. If we can learn more about their life cycle, we could better understand everything that surrounds humanity, even the elements that make up our own body.

Thus, in many of the stages of their lives, the stars remain completely obscured by dense clouds of dust and gas that visible light cannot pass through. Thanks to the infrared instruments, and the gold coating of its mirrors, the James Webb telescope is capable of piercing these clouds and gases, shedding light on stages in the life cycle of stars that we have never observed before.

This is because, as the stars burn all their fuel and finally die in a big explosion, they are creating, recycling and redistributing all the fundamental elements of the Universe. To understand them is to understand everything.

A telescope to understand the dawn of the universe

We calculate that el Big Bang, name given by the scientific community to the first moments that occurred in the universe, took place 13.8 billion years. That is why the mission of the James Webb telescope is to act as a great Time Machine, capable of looking into the past and observing the ancient flashes of that dawn of the Universe. It would be going beyond the period explored by the Hubble Space Telescope.

deep universe

The origin of the universe is the collision of galaxies that left behind a trail of infrared radiation that is very difficult to follow.

All the progress The effects of the James Webb telescope are due in large part to its large mirror and sophisticated instruments. Thanks to them, scientists obtain every day very important clues about some of the great mysteries of the universe, getting closer to the answers we have always sought.

Study the beginning of the Universe, and the great activity that the galaxies had at that time would allow us to understand why they collided so often and why the stars formed at such a speed then. We know that the first galaxies to form were very bright in ultraviolet light and in the visible part of the spectrum. This is due to a phenomenon called “red shift”, in which the light has moved up into the infrared spectrum and, by the time it reaches us, is no longer visible to the human eye. The power and instruments of the Webb Telescope are very sensitive to infrared radiation which will be extremely useful for studying the first galaxies and improve our knowledge about its evolution.

Where is the James Webb Telescope

It is in motion at a point between the Sun and the Earth.

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