Honestly Webb is way overhyped for what it is. Almost 8 times the mirror area of Hubble, three decades more advanced cameras, placed so far beyond any possible interference and it makes images that are at best twice as good and roughly at the same magnification. That photo of Jupiter was pretty disappointing in comparison.
With only limited yaw control and no articulation of any kind I was frankly surprised that it was able to see DART at all.
My understanding: what’s great about Webb is that it can take pictures in the infrared.
It has to be really cold to do this, hence the big complicated heat shield.
Infrared let’s us see things that are further away, because when something’s really far away it gets red-shifted down out of the visible spectrum into the infrared (due to expansion of the universe).
So it’s not really any better at imaging things that are close / in the visible spectrum like Jupiter.
You have to consider that JWST is working at much longer wave lengths than Hubble. So the resolution isn't much better than Hubble, if at all. Resolution of an optical instrument is limited by diameter over wave length. So despite its much larger mirror, it doesn't pull more resolution than hubble.
Where it excels at is, first looking at wave lengths so far invisible by any larger telescope. Hubble can't observe at those wave lengths and they are virtually invisible from earth, as the atmosphere basically absorbs any light at those wave lengths.
Also, it has almost 10x as much surface area than Hubble. So it will collect vastly more light than Hubble, as can be seen by the deep sky pictures available so far, taken in a fraction of time compared similar Hubble pictures.
The limited targetting control doesn't matter from a scientific perspective. There is a many years long waiting list for observations. During a year, the telescope is able to hit every spot on the sky, so the observations are just done in the order given by the telescope.
Ah fair enough, I hadn't considered the wavelength impact on resolution. That makes at least some sense.
> Hubble can't observe at those wave lengths and they are virtually invisible from earth
coughs in Spitzer
> The limited targetting control doesn't matter from a scientific perspective.
I would argue that it does matter in the case of specific events like the DART impact. Having it in its field of view was either extensive planning or dumb luck. I really don't see how it was too complicated to add one pitch servo, hell having a full robotic arm is even planned for LUVIOR.
They didn't create Webb to put better pictures as your desktop background. Saying it's "overhyped" because you don't understand what it's for is just peak internet, isn't it.
The media hyping people up for pictures of a scientific data collector that doesn't mean anything to most people is probably the definition of overhyped.
The point of the Webb telescope isn’t to take pictures! It’s to collect data. It can “see” way further into the early universe by examining infrared light, which Hubble cannot do.
I just assumed the general public isn't the main user of Webb. I figured infrared is more interesting to scientists than me. Why else would they have chosen that?
Maybe they'll figure out a way to translate the colours better for consumption.
With only limited yaw control and no articulation of any kind I was frankly surprised that it was able to see DART at all.