Eli5 James Webb telescope

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If we can use it to see farther than we have ever seen before why haven’t they got a really good close up of the nearest Solar system outside of our own?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

There are three big things to consider when it comes to astronomy:

* Resolution

* Intensity

* Wavelength/frequently

For resolution, this is dependent on both the telescope and the camera. The bigger the telescope, the better the resolution, but only if the camera can keep up. A better resolution means you can see things with smaller *angular* size. To give an example of angular sizes, stars are much bigger than the planets in our solar system, but they are further away and end up appearing smaller.

The intensity is about how much light there is, and this is important so that we can distinguish it from noise. Having a bigger mirror means you collect more light and so get a better signal to noise ratio.

Then there is the wavelength of light, telescopes are made to observe a certain range of light.

As the universe expands, light traveling through it gets redshifted to a longer wavelength, making it easier to observe distant things in longer wavelengths. The amount of light also decreases with distance, as the light is getting more spread out. This means that the JWST is good at observing distant galaxies because it observers in a longer wavelength than Hubble and has a big mirror.

To get details of other star systems though requires an even bigger mirror, because they have a very small angular size.

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