So long, Hubble!

It has always been a delight to look at pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. With its clarity and excellent image quality,it seemed as if there would be no end to it. But in the recent years NASA, in collaboration with European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency has been working on James Webb Space Telescope. JWST is the successor to HST, to be launched in 2013.

The primary focus of JWST is to observe the luminous glows which originated from The Big Bang and hence improve our understanding of the origin of our Universe. JWST will also play a key role in studying the origins of other galaxies, star formations, creation of heavier chemical elements such as carbon, oxygen and iron as well as origin of life on other planets.
What really surprises me is the fact that even though JWST is a successor to HST, there are major differences among them, the major one being the region of spectrum they observe. JWST will be highly sensitive to infrared rays whereas Hubble focussed mainly on visible radiations. Another difference to note is the size of the mirror which is 6.6m in diameter in the JWST, almost thrice as compared to 2.4m diameter of Hubble. This makes the field of view (region of space looked at) 15 times greater than that of Hubble. Interestingly,the excellent image quality we got from Hubble will be maintained.
All I can imagine is that with such a gigantic telescope extending our reach and revealing the truth behind the origin of Universe, the world of Astronomy surely has a lot to look forward to in the coming years...

Bhaskar Mahajan