This month, the largest and most powerful space telescope ever built is from South America.
The one of NASA鈥檚 earliest administrators, is bigger than the famous Hubble Space Telescope and is expected to give astronomers a much deeper understanding of our universe.
Astronomers from all over the world will use the telescope to explore the mysteries of the cosmos, but Texas researcher Caitlin Casey is co-leading the most ambitious project in the telescope鈥檚 first year.
The project, known as the or 鈥淐OSMOS-Webb鈥�, aims to survey half a million galaxies, observations that astronomers from around the globe will be able to use in their own research.
Casey joined us to talk more about the goals of the project.
Interview Highlights
Setting out to see things never before observed by the human eye
鈥淲e are looking for so many things, among them, the most distant galaxies that have ever been found,鈥� Casey said. 鈥淲e will be able to find galaxies that, believe it or not, formed something like 400 million years after the Big Bang.鈥�
When astronomers look deep into space, they鈥檙e also looking back in time. With the COSMOS-Webb project, researchers will be looking more than 13 billion years into the past, Casey said.
鈥淲e hope to see the first collections of stars that first lit up the universe,鈥� she said.
The scientific goals of COSMOS-Webb
Casey described the project鈥檚 overall goal as 鈥減retty off-the-wall ambitious.鈥�
The researchers aim to put together a much more expansive version of the famous images taken by the Hubble telescope.
鈥淭he Hubble Deep Field covers about the size of a head of a pen, if you鈥檙e holding that pen at arm鈥檚 length, on the sky,鈥� Casey said. 鈥淲ith COSMOS-Webb, we鈥檙e covering an area that鈥檚 roughly the size of three full moons, so that鈥檚 pretty large.鈥�
Casey said the data researchers gather could reveal some of the 鈥渓argest structures that exist in the cosmos.鈥�
鈥淭hese are larger than galaxies, larger than galaxy clusters,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hese are the fundamental filaments that link everything in the universe with everything else, and we鈥檙e trying to find those filaments at the dawn of time.鈥�
What the universe will look like through the Webb telescope
鈥淲e expect these images to look absolutely stunning.鈥� Casey said.
The images are expected to appear similar to what astronomers have seen with the Hubble telescope, but with many more distinct objects.
鈥淲e will still see exquisite galaxies that have spiral arms and are colliding with one other,鈥� Casey said. 鈥淲e expect them to be really quite stunning 鈥� they鈥檙e also going to be higher resolution images than Hubble has given us.鈥�
The personal meaning of this moment
鈥淚t鈥檚 pretty profound,鈥� Casey said, noting the years of work it鈥檚 taken researchers to get to this point.
鈥淲hen [the Webb telescope] first got going as a project, I was still in elementary school,鈥� Casey said.
鈥淚 feel just so lucky to be a part of it,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 think everyone in the world, too, should feel lucky that we get to be alive at this wonderful time, when we鈥檙e going to see the most distant objects that humans have ever seen.鈥�
