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Showing posts from December, 2021

What’s the difference between the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb ?

 The James Webb telescope was launched on December 24th, 2021, to succeed the Hubble Space Telescope, which is incredibly important due to its many discoveries in astronomy, like the age of the universe and that there are black holes in the centre of galaxies. But what are the big differences between these two space telescopes? Firstly, the two telescopes see in different ways. Hubble has a mirror that’s “2.4m wide”, while James Webb has a segmented “6.5m wide mirror” (NASA/ESA/M.Livio & Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)). This means it can get more light and therefore also see more things. The type of light they see is also different. Hubble used primarily ultraviolet and visible light and Webb uses mostly infrared rays. This was changed from Hubble because visible light can be blocked by dust in space while infrared light doesn’t have such obstacles making James Webb more efficient at collecting data. However, infrared telescopes need to stay cool to work appropriately since h