What do we know about NASA’s James Webb Telescope?
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is the biggest and most powerful space telescope. It moves around the Sun, looking at everything that happened in our universe, like the creation of solar systems and stars. It was sent to space on December 25, 2021.
The Webb telescope is really tall, like a 3-story building, and long, like a tennis court! Instead of regular light, it looks at invisible light that we feel as heat, called infrared radiation. This special ability helps it see through dust clouds in space where stars and planets are born!
The telescope's cameras are like our eyes, sensitive to the heat of the Sun. Just like we wear a hat or sunglasses to block the Sun, the Webb telescope has a giant sun shield to protect its tools and mirrors. The telescope uses huge, gold-coated mirrors to see the universe.
What images have been captured by the Webb Telescope?
The James Webb Space Telescope recently took stunning pictures of 19 spiral galaxies that are facing us directly. These images were shared by a group of scientists working on a project called PHANGS (Physics at High Angular Resolution in Nearby GalaxieS).
The closest galaxy, NGC5068, is about 15 million light-years away from us, and the farthest one, NGC1365, is almost 60 million light-years away.
What is a spiral galaxy?
There are three main kinds of galaxies, depending on their shape: spiral, elliptical, and irregular.
Spiral galaxies are like swirls of stars and gas, and they often have pretty shapes with many hot, young stars. They have a rotating disc with arms that curve out from a crowded centre where stars and gas are concentrated.
Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, in which the Earth and our Solar System are located, is an example of a spiral galaxy.
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