Disclaimer: IANA scientist of any sort, just a huge nerd. I've been interested in astronomy since I learned to read, and JWST has been planned for most of my l

Disclaimer: IANA scientist of any sort, just a huge nerd. I've been interested in astronomy since I learned to read, and JWST has been planned for most of my life(all but 2 years if you count all explorations of ideas for a post-hubble telescope since about 95). I've been waiting for this my whole life, so this feels like a strangely personal event to me even though I had nothing to do with it myself. It's so hard to even put into words the tremendousness of this technological and scientific achievement, so I won't try. Anyway, enough sap. I'm super stoked that they've already started taking spectra of exoplanets. This one was sort of an "easier" one but the detail was unprecedented as with all the other observations. I can't wait to see some results on some of these smaller rocky planets in their star's "goldilocks zone". These are the planets that have simply been out of reach until now, and are the most interesting in terms of searching for signs of life.