Back to the Future

James Webb telescope, broadcasting 12th July

Courtesy of the European Space Agency (ESA)

The James Webb space telescope (JWST — named after a NASA admin bod) has been described as a time machine by many scientists. It will be hunting out life-supporting planets in our own galaxy as well as studying the universe shortly after the big bang 13.8 billion years ago.

What? How?

Telescopes

We have been looking up to the heavens with the naked eye for centuries. But it was only in 1610, when Galileo with the aid of a simple telescope, was able to publish an account of his observations of the Moon, Jupiter and the Milky Way called The Starry Messenger. It made him famous.

Being at school in the northwest of England, ensured at least one trip to Jodrell Bank, famous for the Lovell radio telescope — a 76 metre reflecting surface commissioned in 1957 and a significant landmark on the Cheshire Plain. It briefly featured in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy below a Vogon spaceship and in a Doctor Who series.

Another famous observatory is La Silla, on the fringes of the Atacama Desert, 600km north of Santiago de Chile at an altitude of 2400 metres. This remote location provides one of the darkest night skies on earth, far from any…