Hubble vs. Webb - How Far Back Will They See?

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to Forbes, reporting in "Peering Back At The Universe's Past," space telescopes are really acting as time machines. They can watch objects which are so far from us that light has taken billions of years before reaching their mirrors. The Hubble telescope is able to look at events that took place 13.3 billion light-years ago. But the James E. Webb space telescope, currently under construction, and scheduled to be launched in 2011, will be able to see even further and catch phenomena which happened 13.5 billion light-years ago. The astronomers think the Webb telescope might even be able to see up to 13.7 billion light-years ago, when our universe was just 200 or 300 million years old. We are used to see fantastic images from Hubble, without paying too much attention to the characteristics of the telescope itself. So here is a thorough comparison between the two space telescopes."

Comments

Uh.

[JanusFury]

I don't really see how this is anything new. Everybody should know that light only travels at about 186,000 miles per second, so of course it's not going to reach us right away...

So this whole 'looking into the past' thing is just a stupid way of saying that the telescopes can see really far.

I guess if you can dupe the less-educated parts of the US population into thinking that the Hubble is a time machine, though, maybe they'll bitch at NASA and make sure the Hubble gets maintained for the next twenty years! That'd be good.