September 18, 2022

JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE & ANOTHER EARTH… Recently NASA put the image taken by the James Webb space telescope in the public domain. These are truly mesmerizing and unprecedented photos which tell us interesting things about the universe. One of these photos gives us the oldest glimpses of the universe. We can watch up to 13.1 billion years in the past. In another, we discovered an alien exoplanet where water or H2O, has been found. Let’s try to understand this new discovery…. James Webb Space Telescope is the largest and most powerful space science telescope ever built. Every image is a new discovery, and each will give humanity a view of the universe that we have never seen before. And so, the web is able to look at the formation of the first stars and the first galaxies. The web is tremendously exciting. Light from other worlds, orbiting stars, far beyond our own. It’s astounding me in many ways.” All about the James Webb Space Telescope This James Webb Space telescope cost about 10 billion dollars.  NASA spent almost 25 years working out on its design and development. and most interestingly the spot where this telescope is located currently, it is operating at the temperature of – 266.75°Celsius. It is so cold that it is almost at the absolute zero temperature of -273° Celsius, temperature cannot fall beyond this. It is only a few degrees warmer than the absolute zero temperature. To maintain this temperature, the James Webb Space Telescope rotates around the sun. About 1.5 million km from Earth, there is a point known as the l2 point there as it is always in the earth’s shadow in the way that it can safely orbit the sun. As you can see in the picture below, to block out the rest of sunlight a sunshield has been attached behind it. It is nearly as big as a tennis court. Do you know what the focal length of this telescope is?… Those of you who use DSLR cameras as a hobby would know the lens of those cameras usually has the focal length somewhere around 24 mm, 35mm or 50 mm. the focal length of James Webb Space Telescope is more than 2500 times of a DSLR camera which is 131.4 meters. Its men’s mirror weighs around 705 kgs. Photos taken by James Webb Space Telescope  Let me tell you this is our electromagnetic spectrum, photo : Nasa Different electromagnetic waves have different wavelengths. In it, a tiny spectrum of visible light that can be seen. the light which we can see without naked eyes. The rainbow colours which are VIBGYOR-violet, Indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red. The wavelength ranges from 0.38 to 0.7 micrometer. The wavelengths higher than red are known as infrared, and the wavelength on which this James Webb Space Telescope can take pictures ranges from 0.6 to 28 micrometres. Basically, this telescope works with the infrared part. Its advantage is that you can look through the gases and clouds, because of the larger wavelength of the infrared. When the wavelength is longer than it is easier to go through the objects. Such as the Radio waves, whose wavelength is in kilometres, we can listen to them with the help of the radio, those waves can pass through our homes and walls. Two infrared cameras are mounted in this telescope… 1. The Near Infrared Camera (NIRCAM) To capture the sorter infrared wavelengths 2. Mid-Infrared Instruments (MIRI) To capture the longer infrared wavelength. The photos can be different depending on which camera is used. Look at the photo below, this photo of SOUTHERN RING NEBULA is taken by NIRCAM. When these photos were released by NASA it went viral on social media. Photo: images4.fanpop.com Also Read: Poco m5 price and full Specifications How to automatically delete unnecessary emails from your Gmail  How To Make Upi Payments Without an Internet Connection? How To Spot Fake News On WhatsApp? But the same photo was taken by the MIRI cam as well and the same thing looks like this on the MIRI cam. The dust clouds which were visible in the picture by NIRCAM don’t show up much on the MIRI cam because the wavelength of the MIRI cam is more so it is easy for it to get through the objects. In both the pictures taken by NIRCAM and MIRI cam, we are seeing the death of a star. two stars orbiting around each other, the more shining star is at the early stages of its life, and the dimmed star is dying. While dying the last thousands of years, this star has been releasing clouds of gases and dust. Nebula is the planetary of cloud of gases and dust and because the two stars are orbiting each other, the cloud keeps getting swished around. In the NIRCAM photo, you can see only one star but in the MIRI cam photo the cloud is quite muted and you can clearly see the two stars. ● Photos released by NASA 1. A PHOTO OF DEEP FIELD SMACS 0723 – The first photos released by NASA was this one, a photo of DEEP FIELD SMACS 0723 by NIRCAM Photo: webbtelescope.org This photo gives you a glimpse from 13 billion years ago. In this photo we can basically see a galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. The galaxies closer to our camera have a high gravitational force such that they are distorting the light coming behind them. it creates a magnifying glass of sorts. This phenomenon has been named Gravitational lensing. With its  help we can see objects behind it. It isn’t a photo which was simply clicked by the telescope as is, it took 12.5 hours to take this photo. Actually, the telescope had to take several different images at different wavelengths and later combined them and we are now seeing this combined photo. In this the galaxies that appear redder in colour are farther from us. the redder the galaxy, the farther it is. 2.