A new age in astronomy - The first few months of the James Webb space telescope

Abstract

Already when the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, there were plans to build an improved and even more powerful space telescope. In December of last year, these plans finally came to fruition and the James Webb Space Telescope, which had been intended as the successor to Hubble, was launched. Due to its larger size and sensitivity range up to the mid-infrared, the new telescope has many advantages compared to its predecessor, and its technical parameters were chosen from the outset to best meet the scientific objectives. These include, among other things, the observation and analysis of the earliest galaxies and stars, the study of the formation and development of stars and solar systems, as well as the direct observation of exoplanets and the analysis of their atmospheres, thus research into the development of life. Naturally, in addition to these, the new space telescope will prove to be useful in many other areas, for example, we can mention the observation of objects in our own solar system in the infrared range. After the six-month commissioning procedure, some predefined targets were immediately observed, and the data collected on them were shared with the general public in mid-July. The results so far exceed all expectations, many galaxies have been detected from much earlier times than before, questioning our current model describing the evolution of galaxies, the atmospheres of exoplanets have been successfully analyzed, showing the presence of various compounds, and last but not least, new images of previously unseen beauty have been published, showing some already known objects in space.