تلسكوب جيمس ويب الفضائي infographic
Graphic shows specifications of the James Webb Space Telescope and science behind the mission.
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فضاء

تلسكوب جيمس ويب الفضائي

By Jordi Bou

December 18, 2021 - تلسكوب الفضاء ويب، الذي تم تصوره منذ أكثر من 30 عاماً خلفاً لتلسكوب هابل، هو أكبر وأقوى مرصد في التاريخ. بمجرد دخوله في المدار، سيسمح لعلماء الفلك بالتعمق في الكون إلى أبعد مما وصلوا إليه في السابق.

Conceived 30 years ago as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the Webb is a joint project between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

The project has experienced numerous delays and cost overruns, ballooning from $500 million to almost $10 billion.

To fit inside the rocket, the telescope must be folded up, then unfolded in space in a series of manoeuvres in the first month after launch.

Webb features 18 hexagonal shaped mirrors arranged in a honeycomb shape 6.5 metres across, giving it a surface area 6.25 times larger than Hubble’s spherical 2.4m diameter primary mirror.

A Kapton foil sunshield the size of a tennis court blocks light from the sun, moon and Earth to keep the telescope extremely cool.

Webb will orbit the sun 1.5 million km from Earth at Lagrange point 2, where the gravitational pull from Earth and the sun balance out, allowing the observatory to remain stable.

While Hubble looks mostly in the visual and ultraviolet parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, scientists claim that Webb will look at longer wavelengths in the infrared, to see what the universe looked like around 100 to 250 million years.

Webb will also look much closer to home, studying nearby exoplanets and objects within our solar system including Mars, the gas giants, and even some asteroids and comets.

Sources
PUBLISHED: 13/10/2021; STORY: Graphic News
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