What Will JWST study?
The most special thing about this telescope is that it has been designed mainly to detect infrared light. When you look at the sky, with a normal telescope, you see the wavelengths of visible lights. The light that you can see with your naked eye. Do you remember studying about Electromagnetic Spectrum in school?
The Electromagnetic waves in a broad spectrum. It includes X-rays, Ultraviolet rays, radio waves, microwaves, and in there, there is a small range of visible light. The light that we can see with our naked eyes. The normal telescopes that you can buy at any shop, help you look only at the wavelength of the visible light. The range of visible light is between blue colour to red colour, and red has the biggest wavelength. And as you know, with electromagnetic waves, the bigger the wavelength, the easier it is for the electromagnetic waves to pass through any object or obstacle. Like the radio waves.
The radio that you listen to. The wavelengths of radio waves may span more than kilometres. For this reason, you can listen to the radio waves that pass through buildings even. The wavelengths of infrared are bigger than that of red. But we can’t see infrared with our naked eyes. The advantage of using a telescope for looking at infrared, can be seen in this photo.
The photo on the left was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The most powerful space telescope we had till now. You can see the space dust in it. And you can see the clouds of gases forming. But infrared wavelength can pass through the dust and clouds and we’ll be able to see what lies behind this. The picture on the right is what we imagine we would be able to see with the James Webb telescope.
