What can we expect to discover using the James Webb Space Telescope
In: Planetary Science
So don’t know if you know this but they went a different approach with the James Webb than the Hubble – the Hubble detected visible and UV light, while the James Webb detects red visible light (the top color of the visible light spectrum) but detects up to infrared.
It also has a bigger mirror which lets you detect fainter light. Very distant galaxies emit (relatively) bright infrared light so now we can see the distant universe with much more detail. This let’s us basically get a clearer picture of anything out there like supernovas, different classes of stars, galaxy systems, etc. we can analyze these images to get information about the physical processes going on so clearer pictures means we learn more about how it works, and there’s more chance we’ll find more of these things to study that the Hubble couldn’t see.
Also it has a very good modern spectrograph, an instrument that is used to identify elements based on the light coming in. So we’re already learning much much more about this in the few years the scope has been up there.
We hope to discover objects in the redder part of the spectrum that previous telescopes haven’t handled as well. There is [an article in Astronomy](https://www.astronomy.com/science/the-10-greatest-jwst-discoveries-so-far/ ) that describes the top 10 discoveries so far.
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