Webb telescope promises new age of the stars
The James Webb Space Telescope lit up 2022 with dazzling images of the early universe after the Big Bang, heralding a new era of astronomy and untold revelations about the cosmos in years to come.
The most powerful observatory sent into space succeeded the Hubble telescope, which is still operating, and began transmitting its first cosmic images in July.
"It essentially behaves better than expected in almost every area," said Massimo Stiavelli, head of the Webb mission office at the Space Telescope Science Institute, in Baltimore.
Already scientists say the Webb telescope, now orbiting the sun at a million miles (1.6 million kilometres) from Earth, should last 20 years, twice its guaranteed lifetime.
"The instruments are more efficient, the optics are sharper and more stable. We have more fuel and we use less fuel," said Stiavelli.
Stability is vital for image clarity.
"Our requirement was similar to that of Hubble, in terms of pointing accuracy. And we ended up being seven times better," the mission office chief added.
Public appetite for the discoveries has been fed by the colouring of the telescope's images.
Light from the most distant galaxies has been stretched from the visible spectrum, viewable by the naked eye, to infrared -- which Webb is equipped to observe with unprecedented resolution.
This enables the telescope to detect the faintest glimmers from the distant universe at an unprecedented resolution, to see through the veil of dust that masks the emergence of stars in a nebula and to analyse the atmosphere of exoplanets, which orbit stars outside our solar system.
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"The first year (of observation) is a way to test out the tool for the small rocky planets in the habitable zone that
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