The most powerful space telescope ever made is coming into sharp focus through a camera designed by the University of Arizona.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the product of decades of work by teams around the world but the first images are coming from a camera designed at the University of Arizona and that camera is helping engineers adjust the mirror to bring the universe into the sharpest focus we’ve ever seen .
Even in the test phase the University of Arizona camera was sharp enough to not only send back sharp images of the test star, but also capture a sea of galaxies so distant you are seeing light created billions of years ago. “Hubble gave us a really good view of the early universe," Hainline said."But if the universe was a human, it told us about the universe as it was when it was one year old and a lot can happen between you know, when a baby's born in one year.”It helps that the Webb has a much larger mirror than Hubble, but also because it’s focused more on infrared, a type of light we can’t see with our own eyes. Infrared is more likely to be able to reach us across the billions of miles—and years.