After a tremendous first year of study, the James Webb Space Telescope is just getting began as scientists fully grasp how they will make the most of the strongest space telescope ever built.
It has been a year since JWST became fully operational in July 2022.
NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency marked a milestone by releasing some of the first images taken by the golden telescope that wowed each the public and the scientific community.
Webb exceeded expectations, and the telescope team believes it’s going to probably run for 20 or 30 years.
“JWST’s first year was like a whirlwind,” said JWST scientist Kevin Hainline.
The worldwide scientific community has been waiting many years for the James Webb Space Telescope to usher in a latest era of discovery.
“It was pretty crazy to make changes and watch the individual segments work and think, ‘Man, at some point this thing will probably be in space. And now it’s. And these are the same mirrors… capturing light since the dawn of time. It’s wonderful. Hanline said.
![The Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/NYPICHPDPICT000013930627-1.jpg?w=1024)
![Saturn and its three moons, from left: Enceladus, Tethys and Dione, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/NYPICHPDPICT000013436557.jpg?w=1024)
Hainline, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona, is a component of the science team for JWST’s essential camera, near-infrared camera, or NIRCam.
Hainline describes the NIRCam as the “workhorse” of the telescope’s camera, which sees at wavelengths beyond the human eye and produces high-resolution images like the one below.
JWST was capable of track the Hubble Space Telescope images, showing latest details and returning images covered in as many galaxies as freckles.
![A spiral galaxy named NGC 1672.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/NYPICHPDPICT000011711627.jpg?w=1024)
Hubble was limited to a variety of wavelengths and will not see through dust like Webb.
The telescope has already discovered the farthest confirmed galaxy since about 350 million years after the Big Bang.
“It’s really great to have a look at some of the Hubble images in comparison with the (JWST) NIRCam images to see what works that we missed in the early images,” Hainline said.
![Messier 16, also known as the Eagle Nebula, is a famous region of the sky often referred to as the "Pillars of Creation".](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/NYPICHPDPICT000011711638.jpg?w=1024)
When JWST observed the famous Eagle Nebula often called the “Pillars of Creation”, the difference between Hubble’s 1995 and Webb observations was black and white.
The subsequent call for proposals to make use of the commentary time of the James Webb Space Telescope opens this fall.
The first year is like ‘Wow, what can we do with this telescope? It’s amazing,'” said Hainline. “Second year is like, ‘What can we do Really to do with this telescope?
![This landscape of](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/NYPICHPDPICT000010813247.jpg?w=1024)
Now that scientists have warmed as much as JWST, Hainline said the discoveries are only starting.
The first year of data alone will encourage more articles and result in more discoveries.
“There are only loads of objects that we wish to return to and say, ‘What is going on on with this? Let me study this in additional detail,” said Hainline.
![Star Wolf-Rayet 124.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/NYPICHPDPICT000012414374.jpg?w=1024)
![NGC 346 is a star cluster in a nearby galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, about 200,000 light years from Earth.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/NYPICHPDPICT000011711648.jpg?w=1021)
The subsequent generation of astronomers and space explorers will profit from JWST.
Discoveries with Webb will proceed for generations.
“Someone who’s in highschool now will do a PhD. on the dataset I’m working on at once,” Hainline said. “We will not be limited by data, we’re limited by people. There aren’t enough people working on the amount of data on this database to cope with.”
![The James Webb Space Telescope shows the heart of M74, also known as the Ghost Galaxy.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/NYPICHPDPICT000011874814.jpg?w=1024)
While the James Webb Space Telescope’s budget has grown to greater than $10 billion, criticism has include every launch or engineering delay of this government-funded telescope.
Hainline said that while the wait was tedious, it was price getting it right because there is no such thing as a other James Webb Space Telescope waiting somewhere in the hangar.
“This just isn’t my telescope. That is our telescope. That is the telescope in the world,” he said. “The photographs you see … are yours and you’ll be able to view them.”