Lewis Francis-Denny - AoW - James Webb Space Telescope

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On Christmas Day 2021, the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) launched the
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) from French Guiana, on the northeastern coast of South
America. It is the largest and most powerful space telescope ever constructed – a $10 billion
international collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the
Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
In July 2022, the first image from JWST was released: a photo of a 4.6 billion-year-old galaxy
called SMACS 0723. It was our first view of the distant galaxy. In July 2023, to celebrate the
telescope’s one-year anniversary, JWST shared an image of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex –
the star-forming region closest to Earth. It’s 460 light-years away.
Ambitious objectives
These pictures, and many others from JWST over the past year, have sparked our collective
imagination – but the telescope's purpose goes far beyond providing mesmerizing photographs.
According to the Canadian Space Agency, the Webb telescope has five mission objectives: to
observe farther into the Universe than ever before; to search for the first stars and galaxies
created after the Big Bang; to help us better understand how planets, stars, and galaxies are born
and evolve over time; to explore distant worlds and study the Solar System; and finally, to help
us determine the potential for life on planets around other stars.
Key to the past

Key to accomplishing these goals is JWST's capability to gaze deeply into near- and mid-infrared
light.
Why? Because distant starlight gets stretched by the expansion of the Universe. By the time it
arrives in our part of the Universe, it has shifted into the infrared region of the light spectrum,
which our eyes – and other telescopes, like the Hubble Space Telescope – can't register.
JWST, however, is able to detect infrared waves from the most distant objects in the Universe.
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By doing so, the telescope is looking back in time, showing us how the Universe appeared when
it was new and possibly helping us to answer some Big Questions, such as: What are the origins
of the Universe? Where do we come from? How did we come to be?
What have we learned?

By April 2023, the James Webb Telescope had discovered the four most distant – and therefore
oldest – galaxies yet observed. Their light has taken 13.4 billion years to reach us. They date
from 300 to 500 million years after the Big Bang, when the first stars are believed to have
emerged.
The James Webb Telescope has also provided detailed images of the ‘Pillars of Creation', three
towers of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, each one light-years tall. Within these
dense clouds, and others like them, stars are formed.
Thanks to JWST's infrared technology, we’ve been able to look inside these clouds for the first
time. What have the telescope's images revealed? Young red stars, called 'protostars' because
they are not yet big enough or hot enough to burn hydrogen in their cores, are sprinkled
throughout.
The images from the James Webb Telescope have also provided more precise counts of new
stars, as well as revealing the amounts of gas and dust in each region. With this information,
scientists are piecing together the story of how stars are created.
Looking at other worlds

The Webb telescope also shows what planets outside our solar system, or “exoplanets,” look
like. In September 2022, the telescope took its first image of an exoplanet—HIP 65426 b. It’s a
gas giant 6-12 times the mass of Jupiter, nearly 400 light-years away from Earth.
Images of a gas giant called WASP39 b revealed a surprise. The planet’s diameter is greater than
Jupiter’s, but it revolves around its host star in an orbit many times tighter than Mercury’s. It’s
incredibly hot – about 900 degrees Celsius. Spectrum analysis of the planet’s atmosphere showed
water vapour, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, sodium, and potassium. BBC’s Sky at Night
Magazine suggests that carbon dioxide could be an indicator of a planet’s ability to support life.
The real surprise, though, was the sulfur dioxide. The processes that normally lead to its creation
shouldn’t be happening at the planet’s high temperatures. That means less common chemical
reactions are responsible – for example, photochemistry, the reaction that occurs when intense
light hits certain compounds, such as water.
Proving us wrong
One of the most exciting aspects of the James Webb Telescope is that it has shown us things we
did not expect. We’ve seen massive galaxies from 500 - 700 million years after the Big Bang.
These galaxies are larger than we would have thought possible, so close to the start of the
Universe.
Pictures of the galaxy CEERS 1019, which existed about 570 million years after the Big Bang,
shows the most distant active supermassive black hole ever seen. According to NASA, “It’s
difficult to explain how the black hole formed so soon after the universe began.”
Another JWST image shows a cluster of young stars, NGC 346, about 200,000 light-years from
Earth. It represents how the Universe looked during its cosmic noon, a period of intense star
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formation between 10 and 11 billion years ago. The image showed more “building blocks” than
expected. There were stars and planets “in the form of clouds packed with dust and hydrogen,”
NASA says. In trying to find out how stars are formed, we are learning about the birth of planets.
About the JWST

JWST orbits the Sun, about 1.5 million kilometres further out from the Sun than the Earth, but
tracking the Earth’s orbit. During the entirety of this orbit, it stays on the night side of the Earth,
looking out into deep space.
The telescope has a large sunshield, a diamond-shaped structure about the size of a tennis court,
to block the Sun’s heat and light from its heat-sensitive optics. The part of the observatory on the
side of the shield facing the Sun is always bathed in the Sun's rays, and generates power via a
solar array.
At JWST’s core is a 6.5 metre-wide primary mirror coated with a microscopically thin layer of
gold. Eighteen mirror segments are hinged together and have motors on the back to adjust the
curvature. They must be aligned to within nanometres – about 1/10,000th the thickness of a hair.
Better than expected

The discoveries over the past year have been more than exciting for scientists.
“In just one year, the James Webb Space Telescope has transformed humanity’s view of the
cosmos, peering into dust clouds and seeing light from faraway corners of the Universe for the
very first time,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Every image is a new discovery,
empowering scientists around the globe to ask and answer questions they once could never
dream of.”
What could be more exciting than that? Perhaps only that in all likelihood, the telescope’s
greatest discoveries still lay ahead of us.
Response option(s):
● What are your thoughts about the JWST? Explain.
● Did something in the article surprise you? Explain.
● Pick a word/line/passage from the article and respond to it.
The JWST is a very ambitious project that has already shown a lot of potential. After one year
scientists have discovered new things and have taken higher quality images of space, I think this
telescope took a new photo of a blackhole as well. The likelihood of the telescope finding life is
a bit small, signs of life and future potential life sure, but the light takes time to reach the
telescope. The further you go out, the longer it takes, so images can be taken billions of years
into the past. So if other life forms who are on the same level of advanced technology as us tried
to see if we have intelligent life, they would only see dinosaurs or fungus trees or a burning rock,
but even that may peak their interest.
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→ Mark your confusion.

Key to the past

What have we learned?

Looking at other worlds

About the JWST

Better than expected

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