JWST optical telescope element
Chris Gunn/NASA
These photos offer a glimpse into the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an extraordinary project three decades in the making.
Launched on Christmas Day 2021, JWST took its first images in July 2022, revealing in unprecedented clarity a region of the galaxy never seen before. Since then, new exoplanets and regions around supermassive black holes have been discovered, upending what we thought we knew about the early universe and astronomical objects such as nebulae.
Its conception, development, and launch are documented in a new book. Inside the star factory, by photographer Chris Gunn and author Christopher Wanjek. His 2017 main image, excerpted from this book, shows JWST’s optical telescope element (OTE, known as the “eye”). Eighteen gold-plated mirrors form a 6.5 meter wide reflector for infrared light.
One reason JWST is more sensitive than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, is the fact that JWST looks in the infrared, allowing it to explore interstellar distances beyond the visible light spectrum. Another key element is Hubble’s giant reflector, six times his size, which allows him to visualize distant objects and phenomena.
OTE and reflector are being inspected with lights off at night.
Chris Gunn/NASA
In the image above, the OTE and reflector are undergoing a night-time lights-out inspection, while the image below captures the first moment engineers are evaluating the mirror. Either surface of the artifact.
“I remember standing in the glow of gold and realizing that I had never stood next to anything so precious,” Gunn writes in the book, released Oct. 17.
topic:
- james webb space telescope
