Raw Power: Webb's Knockout Punch

A 6.5m gold mirror with ~6x Hubble's light-collecting area, tuned to see the universe's first galaxies in infrared.

The top 3

  1. Mirror Showdown: 6.5m vs 2.4m: Webb's 18 gold-coated beryllium segments give roughly 6x the light-collecting area of Hubble's single 2.4m mirror.
  2. Seeing the First Galaxies: Webb confirmed galaxies like JADES-GS-z14-0 at redshift ~14.3, shining just ~290 million years after the Big Bang.
  3. Frozen a Million Miles Out: Webb orbits the Sun-Earth L2 point ~1.5 million km away, its tennis-court sunshield chilling optics below -223 degrees C for infrared vision.

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