James Webb Vs Hubble: Five Major Differences Between NASA's Telescopes
The James Webb Telescope that was termed as NASAs second child last year has entered its orbit. The incredibly powerful space telescope will orbit the Sun in line with Earth. Meanwhile the Hubble telescope is at a distance of roughly 340 miles from earth. Lets take a look at the ways in which the two telescopes are different.
The James Webb Telescope, that was termed as ¡®NASA¡¯s second child¡¯ last year, has entered its orbit today around Lagrange point 2 or L2, which is about a million miles away from earth. The incredibly powerful space telescope will orbit the Sun, in line with Earth.
Meanwhile, the Hubble telescope is at a distance of roughly 340 miles from earth. Let¡¯s take a look at the ways in which the two telescopes are different.
Hubbe/NASA
Decades apart
Hubble was launched in April 1990 into low-Earth orbit. The telescope, for more than three decades, ... Read More
Hubble was launched in April 1990 into low-Earth orbit. The telescope, for more than three decades, has helped us get an idea about how the universe looks like by capturing beautiful images.?
The James Webb Telescope was launched just last month, in December 2021, and is designed to see things 10-100 times fainter than Hubble.?
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Images Captured
Klaus Pontoppidan, before the launch of Webb, said during a news conference that the images taken by... Read More
Klaus Pontoppidan, before the launch of Webb, said during a news conference that the images taken by Webb will be better than that of Hubble. He also said that images would be fundamentally ¡®different because of its different wavelengths¡¯.?
Furthermore, Webb has the ability to, and is designed to primary detect infrared light, leading to unique and stunning images. Hubble, on the other hand, can observe light at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.?
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Distance
While the Webb telescope is about a million miles away, the Hubble is roughly 340 miles. Webb needs to be colder than Hubble in order to capture faint infrared wavelengths of light. Webb, therefore, needs to be shielded from the Sun, Earth and Moon¡¯s infrared radiation.?
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The South Atlantic Anomaly
The South Atlantic Anomaly is a small dent in the Earth¡¯s magnetic field that can impact satellites. Hubble passes through this weak spot about 15% of the time. However, Webb will not cross paths with the anomaly.
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Delving deeper
Webb is expected to go beyond Hubble¡¯s range and behold light from universe¡¯s first stars and galaxies, revealing how the stars looked 13.7 billion years ago.?
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