The Webb Telescope!

I'm fascinated by the James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to be launched on Dec. 22.  It will succeed the Hubble Telescope, which has been probing deep space and providing us with amazing images for 30 years.

Webb will reach back in time to let us see what the universe was like shortly after the Big Bang.  We will be able to study the first stars and galaxies that formed.  It will be able to detect things that are ten billion times as faint as the faintest stars visible without a telescope.  This is 10 to 100 times fainter than Hubble can see.

Webb has been in the works for a very long time.  It is state-of-the-art and complicated.  Much could go wrong as it goes through the process of positioning itself at a point 1 million miles from earth, opening its giant mirrors and beginning its mission.

I'm rooting for it to succeed and furthering our relationship with the always fascinating question:  How did it all begin?