By IANS,
Washington : Seeing into the remotest reaches of space, way beyond the capacity of the most powerful existing (Hubble) telescope, may now be possible with MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument detectors) cameras.
“The MIRI is one of four science instruments aboard the James Webb telescope that is designed to record images and spectra at the longest wavelengths that the Webb can observe,” said Matt Greenhouse, NASA project scientist.
“Light in this portion of the spectrum is invisible to our eyes but is produced by all room-temperature objects and carries key information about the local and early universe,” Greenhouse said.
The space that fills the universe has been expanding since the Big Bang. Consequently, wavelength of ultra-violet and visible light emitted by the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang has been stretched into the infrared portion of the spectrum.
They can only be observed by telescopes equipped with infrared cameras like MIRI, which will help Webb, the largest ever space observatory, achieve over a 100 times the sensitivity of any previous observatory at these wavelengths.
Light at these wavelengths is blocked by water vapour in the earth’s atmosphere and can only be efficiently observed using a telescope in space, said a NASA release.
To see the very first stars and galaxies, astronomers have to look deep into space and far back in time. Starlight travels through space at 300,000 km per second. So if we observe an object that is 300,000 km away with the Webb telescope, we see it after one second.
Astronomical distances are measured in ‘light years’, the distance that light travels in a year. Galaxies can be billions of light years away. As a result of this transmission delay, astronomical telescopes, like the Webb, allow astronomers to literally look back in time and see the universe as it was billions of years in the past.
MIRI is an international partnership between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) combining the talents of NASA JPL, a consortium of European partners, and an international science team.