‘Observations will help trace our cosmic roots'

Early last month, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) opened its 18 golden mirrors to the universe and captured its first image-ofa sun-like star called HD-84406, some 260 light years from the Earth. The telescope was launched on December 25, 2021, and took 30 days to travel 1.5 million km from Earth in a direction opposite to the Sun to reach its destination-a gravitationally stable point named L2—from where it will orbit the Sun, slightly changing its position every three weeks to stay in a halo orbit.

- AKSHIT SANGOMLA

US space agency NASA took 30 years to build the telescope, which it dubs the world's most advanced space observatory, at a cost of US $10 billion. The telescope, named after NASA's second administrator James E Webb, is based on infrared light and can see events from 13.5 billion years back in time. This is right after the Big Bang when a single, unimaginably hot and dense point called the singularity exploded to form the Universe. NASA states the aim of the telescope is to examine the formation of galaxies and the evolution of our own solar system.

AVI LOEB, Frank B Baird Jr Professor of Science at Harvard University and the former chair of the institution's Department of Astronomy, was associated with JWST in its formative stages in the 1990s, when it was called the Next Generation Space Telescope. Its observations of the earliest galaxies could be instrumental in understanding life today, he says in a conversation with

AKSHIT SANGOMLA.

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the most advanced observatory made so far. What makes it different from the Hubble telescope, and other previous telescopes?