3 ms·
It can't do more than one thing?
by hnburnsy 3y ago
It can't do more than one thing?
- dylan604 3y agoBecause of the coating of the mirrors is gold specifically because it is designed to image in IR. "Gold just happens to reflect blue light very poorly but red and infrared light extremely well."[0] This would make visible light images extremely poor if it is not reflecting all wave lengths equally. Think of it like the *nix core belief that you design a thing to do one thing be really fast at it and do it really well while avoiding making something that does a lot of things mediocre and not nearly as fast. We have platforms that are better at imaging visible light. A lot of them. We have nothing with the capabilities of JWST. We have X-ray telescopes. We have microwave telescopes. Trying to ask JWST to be a shittier IR telescope to enable visible light imaging is just a waste of time, effort, and money. [0]https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/faqs/faq.html?linkId=142822511#gold https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/faqs/faq.html?linkId...