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The Herschel Telescope Close To Blast Off
pha7boy writes "The Herschel space observatory, the European Space Agency's answer to the Hubble Telescope, is about to be sent into orbit. With a mirror 1.5 times the size of the Hubble mirror, the Herschel will look at the universe in the infrared and sub-millimeter range. This 'will permit Herschel to see past the dust that scatters Hubble's visible wavelengths, and to gaze at really cold places and objects in the Universe — from the birthing clouds of new stars to the icy comets that live far out in the Solar System.'"
Given the additional 1m on the reflector, it'd be safe to assume a far better performance than Hubble.
Yep. Meters matter. A lot. The summary says the mirror is 1.5 times as big (3.5m/2.4m), but really area and thus quantity of incident light is what matters so it's more like 210% as big as Hubble (3.5^2)/(2.4^2). This is a big space telescope. All else being the same, I'd expect this to show a good deal more distant/faint objects.
It says it's infrared, so this may be more comparable to Spitzer than Hubble. Spitzer is only 0.85m. This beast is 17 times the light bucket Spitzer is.
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In addition to that, the JWST will feature a micro-shutter array, composed of over 62,000 individual shutters in the area of a postage stamp. The idea is that each shutter can be independently opened and closed so visible light from near, bright objects can be blocked out making it easier to view objects that are further away.
I had the opportunity to tour the clean room at Goddard Space Flight Center where the array is being fabricated. The techniques used seemed to mirror the techniques used to manufacture modern microprocessors. It was very interesting to be guided through the process, there are definitely some incredibly smart people at Goddard.
Here is some more information and pictures of the array.