Seeing further than ever before

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the world’s largest ever space telescope, and is due to launch into space in 2018. It will travel approximately 930,000 miles (1,500,000 km) beyond the earth, and will spend between 5 and 10 years searching for distant objects that we cannot see from down on Earth. It is hoped that the JWST will help us to understand the formation of galaxies, stars and planets, and give us a much clearer view of planets outside our solar system.

At the UK Astronomy Technology Centre, based at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, STFC scientists are designing and developing one of the instruments that will be attached to the JWST and launched with it into space. MIRI (Mid InfraRed Instrument) is an infrared camera and spectrometer that will detect light being emitted from far away objects in space. This will give us a better understanding than we’ve ever had before of our universe, and how it was formed.