James-Webb Space-Telescope: A whole new generation for peering into past eras


  • The successor to the Hubble launched very recently. It's currently in stable orbit in the L2 region (a sortof gravitational "pocket" where it can "park" between earth and mars) and the first images should be coming in by this summer.

    Let's talk about it -- the amazing engineering feat that it is, the sheer scope of time that it took, not to mention the mind-boggling costs involved, the fact that it was an internationally cooperative effort, etc.

    And that's just taking into consideration everything accomplished to date -- Let's also talk about everything that it represents moving forward. The potential discoveries you're most excited about, the questions you're most curious to have answered.

    Let's talk anything and everything JWST, please! Someone please tell me I'm not the only astronomy nerd on this site thoroughly impressed by what's we humans have managed to pull off and totally geeking out about what we're gonna find while impatiently waiting for summer to roll around.

    I mean, remember whenever that whole explosion of photographs from the Hubble spread around like wildfire? Nebulae and star clusters and distant galaxies etc.

    My fav of all time was the "deep field" photo. Freakin blew my mind to realize how every single speck wasn't a star but a whole damn galaxy, not to mention how far into the past Hubble was peeking with this "wide-lens, slow-exposure" technique.

    And now, with Webb, we'll be able to peer back in time almost the entire 13.7 billion years of our universe's entire history (up to approx 100 to 200 million years after the big bang) -- seriously, how the hell are none of you absolutely tripping balls at that very idea right now?

    webbwebbwebbwebb


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