The telescopes people use in their backyards give a clear picture of the night sky. But the universe is so vast that light we see from stars takes a long time to reach us.
“Some of the stars you’re looking at, the light left them when the Roman Empire ruled the world,” explains Michael Menzel, an engineer on the Webb telescope mission.
The Webb telescope will look deeper into space and deeper into the past than any telescope on Earth ever could. The farthest galaxies formed more than 13 billion years ago. Because the light from those galaxies is very faint, the telescope is equipped with a giant mirror so it can collect as much of that light as possible.
“We want a time machine, something that can look back at the very first objects in the universe,” Menzel says. He is excited to find out what images the telescope’s four cameras will capture.
“I think we’re going to see things we’ve never dreamed of,” he says.