大象传媒

James Webb Telescope will reveal deepest space images EVER!

james-webb-telescope.Image source, Getty Images
Image caption,

The telescope is the biggest ever created

Nasa's James Webb Telescope is set to reveal the deepest image of the universe EVER taken, according to the space agency!

The telescope was launched into space in December last year and it was tasked to take pictures of some of the first galaxies ever formed.

Although astronomers have now starting receiving pictures from the huge telescope, Nasa won't be sharing them just yet. It's said it'll make the special images available to the public on 12 July.

"If you think about that, this is farther than humanity has ever looked before," Nasa administrator Bill Wilson said during a press briefing at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

"And we're only beginning to understand what Webb can and will do. It's going to explore objects in the solar system and atmospheres of exoplanets orbiting other stars, giving us clues as to whether potentially their atmospheres are similar to our own."

The James Webb Telescope is able to gaze further into the cosmos than any telescope before it, thanks to its enormous mirror made up of 18 smaller gold coated mirrors and its instruments that focus on what's known as infrared, allowing it to peer through dust and gas. This type of light isn't visible to the human eye, but the telescope has no problem detecting it.

In fact the telescope's incredible features allow it to see deeper back in time to the Big Bang, which happened 13.8 billion years ago!

"It may answer some questions that we have: Where do we come from? What more is out there? Who are we? And of course, it's going to answer some questions that we don't even know what the questions are," said Mr Wilson.

What else do we know about the James Webb telescope?

Media caption,

WATCH: Lift-off! The moment the James Webb Space Telescope is launched

The James Webb Telescope is the world's biggest and most technically advanced telescope ever built!

It cost a a whopping $10 billion to create and is about the size of a tennis court when you take into account all of its equipment, and it's as tall as three-storey building.

In fact, it's so big it had to be folded to fit inside its launch rocket!

The James Webb Telescope is designed to see objects up to 100 times fainter than Nasa's other well known telescope Hubble can detect.