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Astronomers have long used infrared technology — the same as in thermal imaging — to see deep space. Our biggest space telescope takes it to another level.
Scientists are abuzz with anticipation for the first full-color images from the James Webb Space Telescope, the biggest and most powerful infrared space-based telescope, which will be revealed in July.
"[The images] are sure to deliver a long-awaited 'wow' for astronomers and the public," said Klaus Pontoppidan, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in the US.
It took more than two decades to develop the James Webb Space Telescope, at a cost of about $10 billion (€9.48 billion), and it's hoped that these first images will go some way to justify all the work, time and money.
A joint project between NASA, the American space agency, and the European and Canadian space agencies, the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in December 2021.
It uses infrared to allow scientists to see deep into space. They want to see distant galaxies and stars and understand how they have formed.
They also hope the telescope will allow them to learn more about exoplanets — planets that orbit stars than our own sun — and to look for signs of life.
As with visible light, the kind we can see with our eyes, infrared is a form of electromagnetic radiation.
Electromagnetic radiation comes in different wavelengths that lie on a spectrum, which starts with radio at one end and includes microwave, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-ray and gamma ray.
Infrared is itself a large part of the electromagnetic spectrum and is divided into near-infrared, mid-infrared and far-infrared.
If you've seen movies like "Predator," the documentary series "Planet Earth" or the performance by Thirty Seconds to Mars at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards, you'll be familiar with infrared light and some of its uses.
All of the above examples used thermal cameras, which capture infrared light.
Thermal cameras are also used at airports to measure peoples' body temperature, which increases when you get a fever, for example from an infection with SARS-CoV-2.
Some snakes like vipers, pythons and boas have special "pit" organs that can detect infrared radiation — or body heat — from their prey as well.
Anything that is above absolute zero (-273.15 degrees Celsius / -459.67 degrees Fahrenheit), whether living or inanimate, emits infrared radiation — that includes you and the chair you're sitting on.
Even if we can't see the object with our eyes, it will emit heat radiation. We can detect that radiation with infrared and then convert that data into an image, using different colors to illustrate the intensity of the infrared radiation. And that creates a contour with detailed outlines of the object.
The James Webb Space Telescope will deliver the sharpest images of deep space to date
That's similar to how infrared telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope create images from space.
Astronomers need infrared to be able to see the earliest stars and galaxies.
Infrared allows us to see through dust clouds that would otherwise block our view.
Dust clouds are where stars and planets are born, and being able to see through them will help us better understand how those stars and planets form.
The James Webb Space Telescope has a massive mirror to capture light from distant stars and planets.
The mirror is six times larger than the one used on its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope should be able to see objects that are 10 to 100 times fainter than what Hubble could see, and take much sharper and detailed images in infrared than any previous telescope of its kind.
Infrared was discovered in 1800 by German-born British astronomer William Herschel, one of the main astronomers behind the discovery of Uranus.
Herschel used a prism and a thermometer to measure how different colors of light influenced temperature and noticed the biggest increase in temperature was in a region that became known as infrared.
The James Webb Space Telescope launched in December from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana
There have been many more discoveries and technological improvements since then, including the first detection of infrared radiation from the moon on 1856.
In 1878 came the invention of the bolometer, an infrared measuring device, that was used in an updated form on the Herschel Space Observatory until 2013.
Infrared detectors continue to improve in sensitivity and accuracy, allowing scientists to detect infrared light from planets like Jupiter and Saturn.
The James Webb Space Telescope will now add to this rich history by looking further back in time than ever before, and with unprecedented detail.
If we're lucky, it will reveal what the universe looked like just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope wasn't able to send images between June 13 and July 15, 2021. A faulty computer memory system halted the telescope's operations. Only retired NASA experts managed to get it working again. For more than three decades, Hubble has provided fascinating images of distant stars and galaxies.
This is one of the most photogenic examples of the many turbulent stellar nurseries the Hubble Space Telescope has observed during its lifetime. The portrait features the giant nebula NGC 2014 and its neighbor, NGC 2020, which together form part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This satellite galaxy of the Milky Way is approximately 163,000 light-years away.
Just as a new episode of "Star Wars" hit cinemas in 2015, Hubble took this picture of a cosmic lightsaber. The celestial structure is located about 1,300 light-years away. It's the birth of a star system — two cosmic jets beaming outward from a newborn star and some interstellar dust. The space telescope takes breathtaking pictures. Here are some more …
Since 1990, the king of all space telescopes has been orbiting Earth at a speed of over 17,000 miles per hour (27,000 kilometers per hour) and an altitude of 340 miles (550 kilometers). Hubble is 11 meters (36 feet) long and weighs 11 metric tons (12.2 US tons), making it comparable in weight and size to a school bus.
Hubble has helped us understand the birth of stars and planets, approximate the age of the universe and examine the nature of dark matter. Here we see a gigantic ball of gas created by a supernova explosion.
Different gases emit all kinds of different colors. Red, for instance, is a sign of sulfur. Green is hydrogen. And blue is oxygen.
The first pictures Hubble sent back were a catastrophe, however, because its main mirror had been ground to the wrong shape. In 1993, Space Shuttle Endeavor took experts to Hubble to fix the problem, giving it a pair of glasses. That was just one of five updates the telescope has received over the years, the last one coming in 2009.
Hubble took this amazing picture in December 2009. The blue dots are very young stars, just a few million years old. This kindergarten of stars is found in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby galaxy, and a satellite of our Milky Way.
How about this snapshot from space? Nobody really knows what exactly Hubble had in its lens here, but that doesn't mean the shot is any less stunning. This image is just one of over 30,000 that Hubble has captured for the ages.
This virtually transcendent photograph is — like most Hubble images — a composition of many single shots. The Sombrero Galaxy is an unbarred spiral galaxy in the Virgo constellation and is located a mere 28 million light-years from the Earth.
The telescope was named after the American astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble (1889-1953). He was the first person to observe that the universe is expanding. With this finding, he paved the way for our current cosmological understanding of the Big Bang as initiator of the universe.
These column-shaped structures are found in the Eagle Nebula, around 7,000 light-years away from Earth. They were documented by Hubble and have received worldwide recognition under the name "Pillars of Creation."
Hubble is going strong, again. Due to its constantly sinking orbit, however, the telescope may reenter the Earth's atmosphere in 2024 and burn up. But its successor is already set: James Webb, being tested inside a thermal vacuum chamber here, is scheduled to be launched this year. Its workplace will be about 1.5 million kilometers (932,000 miles) from Earth.
This, by the way, is another one of Hubble's creations — a space smiley! The easy explanation? It was made by bending light.
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