A NASA astrophysicist explains humanity’s big new toy.
After 25 years and nearly $10 billion, the James Webb Space Telescope has finally left planet Earth. Billed as a successor to the beloved Hubble Space Telescope, the Webb’s mirror is six times larger and its instruments are tuned to observe longer wavelengths, in order to detect the stretched-out light from primitive galaxies 13.5 billion light years away.
That primary mission — to see the first stars and galaxies that formed after the Big Bang — determined the unusual and challenging design of the telescope. Instead of a shiny tube, the Webb Telescope looks like a giant honeycomb riding on a silver surfboard. The short answer to why it looks like that is: It needs to be very big and very cold.
In the video above, NASA astrophysicist Amber Straughn and I build a small model of the telescope to explore its extraordinary design.
You can find this video and all of Vox’s videos on YouTube.
Further reading:
- Make your own paper model of the Webb Space Telescope
- The largest space telescope in history is about to blow our minds
- How telescopes make the universe self-aware
- Unexplainable podcast: The James Webb Space Telescope
- Unexplainable podcast: The James Webb Time Machine
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By: Joss Fong
Title: Why the new space telescope looks so strange
Sourced From: www.vox.com/videos/22851946/james-webb-space-telescope-design
Published Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2021 12:23:33 +0000
