But the speed at which JWST has made discoveries is due to more than its intrinsic capabilities. Astronomers prepared for years for the observations it would make, developing algorithms that can quickly turn their data into usable information. Much of the data is open access, allowing the astronomical community to sift through it almost as quickly as it comes in. Its operators have also built on lessons learned from the telescope’s predecessor, Hubble, by packing in their observing program as much as possible.
For some, the sheer volume of extraordinary data has come as a surprise. “It was more than we expected,” says Heidi Hammel, NASA JWST interdisciplinary scientist and vice president for science at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, DC. “Once we got into operational mode, it was non-stop. Every hour we were looking at a galaxy or an exoplanet or star formation. It was like a firehose.”
Now, months later, JWST continues to send back reams of data to bemused astronomers on Earth, and is expected to transform our understanding of the distant universe, exoplanets, planet formation, galactic structure and more. Not everyone has enjoyed the flurry of activity, which has at times reflected an emphasis on speed over scientific process, but there’s no doubt that JWST is delighting audiences around the world at a tremendous pace. The floodgates have opened and they won’t be closing anytime soon.
Opening the pipe
JWST orbits the sun around a stable point 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Its giant gold-coated primary mirror, which is as tall as a giraffe, is shielded from the sun’s glare by a sunshade the size of a tennis court, allowing unprecedented views of the universe in infrared light .
The telescope was a long time coming. First conceived in the 1980s, it was planned to launch around 2007 at a cost of $1 billion. But its complexity led to major delays, gobbling up money until at one point it was dubbed “the telescope that ate astronomy.” When JWST was finally launched in December 2021, its estimated cost had risen to $10 billion.
Even after the launch, there have been moments of angst. The telescope’s journey to its target location beyond the moon’s orbit took a month and required hundreds of moving parts to deploy its various components, including its huge sunshade, which is necessary to keep cool instruments sensitive to infrared.
