Until now, no one knows how big the universe is or what mysteries it holds. However, thanks to the latest discoveries in the field of astronomy, we are gradually getting to know the place where we live.
One person we must thank for this extraordinary achievement is James Webb. Who is he?
Behind the Name of the Telescope
His full name is James Edwin Webb. Starting his career as a bureaucrat, James Webb—appointed by President John F. Kennedy in 1961—was chosen to lead NASA's Apollo program.
James Webb had a challenging responsibility: ensuring NASA's success in landing humans on the moon and bringing them back to Earth.
The period when James Webb led the Apollo program is often known as the space race, a time when the US and Soviet Union were competing in space exploration.
Without a background in astronomy, many people initially doubted him. This doubt was exacerbated when the American public was shaken by the deaths of three Apollo 1 astronauts in 1967.
With determination, tenacity, and experience in the bureaucratic world, he slowly succeeded in restoring public trust and gathering political support. On July 20, 1969, humanity's great dream finally came true.
During his seven years of service, he ensured the launch of more than 75 NASA space missions, led the robotic space shuttle project, and pioneered the space telescope project, known as the Hubble Telescope.
In 2021, as a tribute to his services, NASA named their newest telescope after him: the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Back to the Past
JWST is not just an ordinary space telescope project. It is a joint project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency), CSA (Canadian Space Agency), and the Space Science Institute.
With a significant mission to uncover the mysteries of the universe's past, JWST is equipped with complex specifications and captures images much sharper than the Hubble Telescope.
On July 12, 2022, NASA released JWST results that successfully found the oldest and most distant supermassive black hole located 13 billion light years from Earth. Additionally, JWST succeeded in photographing a cluster of thousands of galaxies from 4.6 billion years ago.
How can JWST capture stars from billions of years ago? If you recall your physics lessons, light needs time to travel vast distances to reach its destination.
For example, the sunlight we see is not "real-time" sunlight but sunlight from 8 minutes ago because it is far from Earth, about 149 million km away. Can you imagine what happens with stars that are even farther away from the sun?
To capture light waves not visible to the human eye, JWST is equipped with infrared light technology, which has longer wavelengths. Therefore, it's not surprising that JWST can capture the twinkling of stars that "lived" billions of years ago.
With increasingly sophisticated technology, it is not impossible that we can photograph stars even further away to reveal the secrets of the universe.
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