FAQ About The James Webb Space Telescope

With its extremely high spatial resolution in the infrared range, the James Webb Space Telescope can make details visible in the cosmos that we have never been able to observe before. This section of a star-forming region called NGC 3324 is located in the Carina Nebula. Here, new stars are created from gas and dust.

It is located around 1.5 million kilometers from Earth on its side facing away from the sun. James Webb is therefore always at the same distance from Earth - about four times further away than the moon - but does not orbit around the Earth, but with it around the Sun, always on our night side.

“James Webb” was launched into space aboard an Ariane launch vehicle from the European spaceport Kourou in French Guiana on December 25 - after previous cost explosions and ever new postponements. The space agencies of the USA, Canada and Europe are cooperating on the project.

On February 18, 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope was photographed from 1.02 million kilometers away by the Gaia spacecraft when it reached Lagrange point L2.

The telescope was placed in orbit more than one and a half million kilometers from Earth, about four times as far away as the moon. Unlike “Hubble,” the “James Webb” telescope does not revolve around the earth, but around the sun.

A telescopic mirror with a diameter of eight meters collects about a million times more light than a human eye completely adapted to darkness with a wide open pupil. With such a telescope, our sun could still be seen from a distance of up to 60,000 light years.

The edge of our universe is currently defined at a distance of 13.819 billion light years. That's how far the best telescopes go. A light year is about 10 trillion kilometers. So people can look almost 140 quintillion kilometers into space.

The James Webb Space Telescope has roughly the same resolution in the infrared at two micrometers as the Hubble Space Telescope in the optical. The images themselves won't get much sharper and more brilliant, that's just going to be in a different wavelength range.

You can observe almost all planets well, except Pluto, which is much too small and faint. Uranus and Neptune are visible, but usually not worthwhile objects for the telescope.

Set the telescope roughly at the moon, then first set the moon in the finder scope. If it is right in the middle there, it should also be right in the middle of the eyepiece. Now look through the eyepiece and turn the wheels of the focuser until the image is sharp.

There is no outer edge of the universe — regardless of whether it is finite or infinitely large. However, there are fundamental limits to observability for every place in the universe: the cosmic horizons. They are the result of the finite vacuum speed of light.

The Omegon telescope N 76/900 EQ-2 is designed to enter the world of astronomy. In addition to Mars, the lunar craters, this telescope is also suitable for seeing the rings around Saturn. This model is equipped with very good color correction, which helps you recognize objects in the sky better.

If you sit in the forest and watch birds or game that is not too far away from you, then in most cases it works quite well, even with higher magnifications if there is enough light, because the higher the magnification, the darker the image becomes and the less you can see often.

The typical entry-level telescope is a 114/900mm Newton (114mm diameter 900mm focal length). The Newton is a reflecting telescope. This telescope already offers a wealth of observation objects and already delivers good results on the moon and planets. Such a telescope should be available for 200 euros.

Depending on the location and, it is quite possible that you will not be able to observe the desired object with your telescope, as you simply will not be able to collect enough light. Try a bright star or the moon for testing.

When it comes to galaxies, it should definitely be a reflecting telescope with a 200mm aperture or more, because it is only from this aperture that galaxy observation becomes interesting in our opinion. Of course, such optics are also suitable for planets.

A cheap and good telescope costs between 150 and 300 euros. In the mid-price range, telescopes are available for 600 to 1,500 euros. However, you will not receive particularly high-quality reflecting telescopes for less than 1,500 to 3,000 euros.

According to this postulate, the universe has no edge, that is, no end. This assumption of homogeneity was confirmed in 1926 by American astronomer Edwin Hubble. In his observations of how galaxies are distributed in space, he found no indication of an edge of space.

What we can see is not the entire universe, but only the observable universe (I've already explained this in more detail in two previous questions). We can only see the part of the cosmos where the light has had enough time to reach us.

The universe consists of 100 billion galaxies, each with billions of stars, planets and asteroids. There are gigantic amounts of free gas nebulae between the galaxies. And that is only a fraction of the matter in the cosmos.

The shape of the universe is still unknown. The simplest assumption assumes a spherical shape, but with such a small curvature that it looks flat locally. In other words, two parallel laser beams deviate from their parallelism only after a long time.

This is another island of 200 billion suns, and so on and so on. As far as you can see in the universe, as far as light reaches us, we estimate that there are again about 100 billion of these star islands or galaxies.