The Physics of the James Webb Space Telescope

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Humanity has a new eye in the sky, with infrared sensors that will peer into the farthest reaches of the cosmos. Here’s how it works.

This light absorption is also a particular problem for a ground-based infrared telescope. It would be like trying to look at the skies through clouds—it just wouldn’t work.Why Does the JWST Look at Infrared Light?ranges of infrared light: the near infrared and mid-infrared. The near infrared is light with wavelengths very close to visible red light. It's the wavelength that your TV remote uses .

It just so happens that you can also get a Doppler effect with light—but since the speed of light is super fast , the effect isn't noticeable in many situations. However, because of the expansion of the universe, just about all of the galaxies that we see from Earth are moving away from us. So to us, their light appears to have a longer wavelength. We call this a redshift, meaning the wavelengths are more red because they are longer.

When viewing celestial objects, we have to take into account the time it takes for light to travel from the object to our telescope or eyes. For example, light from the nearby Alpha Centauri star system takes 4.37 years to reach the Earth. So if you see it in the sky, you are literally looking 4.37 years into the past.

As an object moves farther away from Earth, the strength of this gravitational force decreases. So, if the telescope moved into a higher orbit , the centripetal force would decrease. In order to stay in a circular orbit, Hubble would have to take longer to orbit.

 

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I think it should focus on a close planet and probable show the land area given these first superb photos of distant stars and clusters.

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