National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s James Webb Space Telescope recently revealed never-before-seen details of the galaxy group ‘Stephan’s Quintet’.
Webb has delivered the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe so far and in only 12.5 hours.
Here is general information for all space enthusiasts who are not related to the field but want to know more:
1) James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was launched on 25th December, 2021.
2) It is now million miles away from Earth it took almost 6 months for the telescope to unfold itself.
3) Hubble telescope launched in 1990 is only 340 miles away from the Earth, so we can imagine how significant JWST is going to be for future explorations.
4) JWST is solar-powered and also has a propulsion system, since it’s solar-powered it has to to stay in close proximity to the Sun.
5) JWST will not orbit the Earth, like Hubble. Instead, it will be in an orbit around the Sun; around an invisible point in space known as an Earth-Sun Lagrange point.
6) JWST works in the Optical range but it is basically designed for near-infrared regions of space.
7) It takes approximately 6 seconds for JWST to send back a signal to the Earth,
8) It sends signals through high-frequency radio transmitters and NASA receives these signals by the help of its radio antennas which are a part of NASA’s Deep Space Network.
9) No, the image isn’t “distorted” or “blurred” in the middle, it is curved like that due to the phenomenon of “Gravitational lensing” . It isn’t caused by a black hole but the combined mass of a massive galaxy cluster named SMAC 0723.
10) According to NASA the JWST will focus on four main areas: first light in the universe, assembly of galaxies in the early universe, the birth of stars and protoplanetary systems, and planets (including the origins of life.)
