It has been a groundbreaking year for astronomy with Wednesday marking the one-year anniversary of the first color images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). During this time, the telescope has peered into the previously hidden depths of the universe, focusing on planets in our celestial neighborhood and spying on galaxies that are older than the Earth.
Launched on Dec. 25, 2021, the JWST is stationed at a Lagrange point (L2), where the gravitational forces of the Earth and sun keep it anchored at a point roughly 1 million miles away from the planet. That is a darker area of space compared to a low Earth orbit, allowing the most powerful telescope ever launched to take crisper images of distant worlds.
