To boldly go …
A seminal moment on Christmas Day saw the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (#JWST).
So what next for the tech behind the £7.4bn successor to Hubble and what astrophysics data science will it reveal?
🛰The early Universe: A look back to around 200 million years after the Big Bang, when the first stars in the Universe formed.
🌏Ancient galaxies: The very first galaxies in the Universe.
🌌Dark matter: It won’t be able to see dark matter, but it will employ gravitational lensing techniques to study the most distant galaxies.
👽Exoplanet atmospheres: Does life exist beyond Earth? Of particular interest, is the TRAPPIST-1 system, where three of its seven planets are in the habitable zone and one may harbour liquid water.
🪐Our ice giants: Neptune and Uranus. It will map their atmospheric temperatures and chemical composition to see how different they are including gas giant cousins, Jupiter and Saturn.
☄️Pluto and the Kuiper Belt Objects: It will explore comets, which are often-pristine leftovers from our Solar System’s days of planet formation and could hold clues to Earth’s origins.
“Live long, and prosper.” Spock
Exciting times ahead! 🚀🔭🛸