10: The James Webb Space Telescope

 The James Webb Space Telescope

                                                                Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Humans have learnt about the solar system and now we are planning to go beyond. To learn about the space beyond our solar system we use space telescopes. Space telescopes do the work of a telescope but these telescopes are placed not on earth’s land but in space itself. Due to their placement in space they give better results and information than other usual telescopes. The James Webb space telescope (JWST) is the most powerful and the costliest telescope ever built. It was made with the joint efforts of National Aeronautics Space Agency (NASA), European Space Agency (ESA) and Canadian Space Agency (CSA). It was sent into space on 25 December 2021 to explore exoplanets. Exoplanets are planets beyond our solar system which orbit another star. In terms of size, JWST is about the size of a football field, and is thus very big. It has 18 mirrors in the front. It can identify the components of an exoplanet easily by analyzing the exoplanets spectrum. This will help us discover life beyond earth. It has four main cameras that are necessary for it to function. They are NIRCAM, NIRSPEC, MIRI, FGS / NIRISS. NIRCAM is Webb's main camera that will image early stars and galaxies in the process of formation. NIRCam uses an instrument known as coronagraphs  which help JWST to take pictures of dim celestial bodies around a bright luminous object, pretty much like our own solar system, where sun is the bright luminous object and the planets are the dim celestial bodies. Thus, it finds more information about exoplanets revolving around a star. NIRSPEC uses 2 processes: Spectroscopy and spectrometry to work .The objects which Webb is going to find more about are faint, so Webb should look at them for hours to collect light. To speed up this process of staring, NIRSPEC will stare at 100 objects simultaneously. MIRI will use its detectors to see the movement of distant galaxies, newly forming stars, and comets as well as objects in the Kuiper Belt while FGS or NIRISS helps Webb to point at exoplanets and thus, it can obtain high-quality images. That's why it is also known as a ‘guider’ .While NIRCAM is the main camera, the other cameras are equally important as well. So now I hope you can appreciate that JWST is going to enlighten us with so much more knowledge in the field of space. It will also help us in answering so many unanswered questions about space. I am just eagerly waiting for what new is going to unfold about space in front of us.