Wondrous new images coming from James Webb Telescope, which carries a lot of technology created in Colorado

More images are coming out from the James Webb Space Telescope this week. The Webb, which carries a lot of technology created in Colorado, was launched just before Christmas in 2021.

It is now in orbit close to a million miles away, doing its work away from the heat and the light of earth.

"The James Webb has a dark sky," observed Dr. Jon Bally, an astrophysicist and professor emeritus at The University of Colorado at Boulder.

Keeping the telescope in a one year, earth-like orbit around the sun allows the telescope to shield itself from the sun and earth's light and heat to allow its infra-red cameras produced by Littleton based Lockheed Martin's Space division.

The image out Monday, showing a galaxy cluster known as S-M-A-C-S 0723, presents how it acted 4.6 billion years ago. It is a composite of images made from different light wavelengths over twelve and a half hours. The infra-red camera known as the near infra-red camera, or N.I.R.Cam produced by Lockheed Martin provides images on light spectrums that the Hubble Space Telescope has not been able to capture. But even Hubble notes Bally, found things we were unsure where there. Gravity, it was believed was slowing the expansion of the universe.

"We learned much to our surprise; it's not slowing down. It's accelerating."

Hubble helped verify dark matter and dark energy, which still have to be explored.

"If you only find what you expect to find. I'd be disappointed. It's those unexpected discoveries that will really make this a revolutionary machine," said Bally.

The Webb features a unique primary mirror system also developed in Colorado. The 18 panel hexagonal system produced by Ball Aerospace in Boulder is a breakthrough that enables the telescope to be the most powerful, most complex and largest space telescope to date. There are so many things that may change with the images it will bring in noted Bally.

"It will have the same resolution as Hubble, but will penetrate into interstellar clouds. Into the early universe where we can see the light from the first stars we hope. That's what I really hope to see out of this machine." But there's so much more and hopefully, there will be years to come.