Meet MIT astrophysicist who will get to use Webb deep space telescope
While the entire world can marvel at the first images from the new James Webb Space Telescope, only a few people will be able to determine where it will be able to look into deep space. One of those people is astrophysicist Rob Simcoe from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Simcoe and his team at MIT will get 100 hours with the Webb telescope, which will be used to look at some of the first stars and galaxies to form after the Big Bang.
"It's just a matter of weeks now until I see my first photon, so I'm tremendously excited," Simcoe said. "We have been preparing for this moment since 2016, knowing that we were going to have time and starting to prepare our observations, and waiting for the telescope to be ready."
The telescope named for a former head of NASA was launched from South America last December and cost $10 billion.
The Webb telescope is three times larger than the Hubble telescope, which has been in space since 1990.
Astronaut Mike Massimino, who has visited Hubble twice for repair operations, said Webb is not only more powerful, it is designed to scan for infrared light — which is invisible to the naked eye but chock full of data.
"Where are things located? How much mass is out there? Maybe what it's made of and so on," Massimino said.
These new images are the first of many to come from Webb over the next two decades.