Astronomers are about to get a Christmas present that will, quite literally, be out of this world, with the launch tomorrow of the most powerful telescope ever sent into space, that promises to reveal secrets of the universe. telester 7NEWS
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, a revolutionary instrument able to peer more deeply into the cosmos than ever, is due for launch from South America's northeastern coast, opening a highly anticipated new era of astronomical exploration.
The Webb telescope will then take a month to coast to its destination in solar orbit roughly one million miles from earth - about four times farther away than the moon. Named for the man who oversaw NASA through most of its formative decade of the 1960s, Webb is about 100 times more sensitive than Hubble and is expected to profoundly transform scientists' understanding of the universe and our place in it.
That, astronomers say, will bring into view a glimpse of the cosmos never previously seen - dating to just 100 million years after the Big Bang, the theoretical flashpoint that set in motion the expansion of the observable universe an estimated 13.8 billion years ago. Webb's instruments also make it ideal to search for evidence of potentially life-supporting atmospheres around scores of newly documented exoplanets - celestial bodies orbiting distant stars - and to observe worlds much closer to home, such as Mars and Saturn's icy moon Titan.
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