The light of galaxies that are billions of light-years away travels to us through the broadening Universe, which triggers its wavelength to extend into the infrared. Webbs infrared vision makes it an effective time machine that will peer back over 13.5 billion years, to a time quickly after the Big Bang.
A few of Hubbles many exceptional images were its deep fields, which used long direct exposures– over days– to capture countless galaxies in single images. They revealed the most distant galaxies ever observed till then, and showed us young galaxies when they were just a few hundred million years old and were little, compact, and irregular.
Webbs infrared level of sensitivity will not only recall further in time but will likewise reveal dramatically more information about stars and galaxies in the early Universe. Webbs data will also answer the compelling concerns of how black holes formed and grew early on, and what affect they had on the development and advancement of the early Universe.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the next of NASAs Great Observatories; following in the line of the Hubble Space Telescope, the Compton Gamma-ray Observatory, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope. JWST integrates qualities of two of its predecessors, observing in infrared light, like Spitzer, with great resolution, like Hubble. Credit: NASA, SkyWorks Digital, Northrop Grumman, STScI
The James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) is designed to answer fundamental questions about the Universe.
With 100 times more sensitivity than the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and a mirror which is nearly double the size of ESAs Herschel Space Observatory, it can spot infrared light generated by galaxies as they formed more than 13.5 billion years ago, in the aftermath of the Big Bang.
For the very first time in human history we have the opportunity to straight observe the very first stars and galaxies forming in the early Universe. When we observe something that is a million light-years away, what we are seeing is in fact how it looked a million years ago: we are looking back in time.
Webb is an international collaboration between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
