The James Webb Space Telescope is almost ready for launch

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Planetary science

Webb is armed with four science instruments to process the light captured by its gold-coated mirrors. They are optimized for infrared light but can also see a slice of the visible spectrum that includes red, orange and gold.

The science instruments can be used separately or combined by investigators who want to study a variety of objects, such as black holes, dark matter, gamma-ray bursts, gravitational waves, large-scale structures in the universe and even how liquid water is transported through space. In particular, Webb’s infrared capabilities will allow it to peer through clouds of dust and gas to see stars and planets being formed.

Hammel is one of several scientists scheduled to use the telescope in its first year of operations, and she’ll use it to look at objects in our own solar system. Given Webb’s location and the fact that it can’t point toward the Sun, it won’t be able to look at the planets in the inner solar system. It can be used with caution to study Mars, the asteroid belt, Jupiter and Saturn, but its strength lies in looking farther out.

“Webb looks like it was perfectly designed to look at objects in the outer solar system, especially Uranus, Neptune and Kuiper belt objects,” Hammel says. “It has the right sensitivity and exact fields of view with the different instruments.”

When Webb was initially being designed, scientists had only found a few exoplanets — planets that orbit other stars. Today, there are more than 4,000, and one of Webb’s major focuses will be to study the atmospheres of these distant worlds.

“With Webb, we can begin studying more systematically the chemical properties of the atmospheres of exoplanets,” said Stiavelli. This includes looking for signatures of water, carbon dioxide and even methane, all of which could point to the possibility of life.

Webb carries several coronagraphs, which block the light from bright stars to reveal orbiting exoplanets. These worlds will only show up as mere points of light, but scientists will be able to analyze them to reveal a great deal of information, including color, rotation rates, seasons, weather and even the possible existence of plant life.



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