The final frontier

Behold the dawn of the universe: The James Webb Space Telescope reached its final destination 1.5 million kilometres away from Earth on January 24. Mission team members are in the intricate process of aligning the Webb's 6.5-metre primary mirror (pictured in yellow) made up of 18 segments, which is expected to take three months. Picture provided by Northrop Grumman/NASA via AP)

The most advanced and expensive telescope ever built is going to explore the “cosmic dark ages” and hopefully see into the first galaxies and stars since the universe came to be.

The James Webb Space Telescope (known as JWST or Webb) infrared space observatory was launched on December 25 and reached its destination, Lagrange Point 2 — 1.5 million kilometres from Earth — on January 24.

JWST was developed by NASA with contributions from the European and Canadian space agencies.

It cost US$10 billion to develop, construct and test.

According to NASA, “Webb will study every phase in the history of our universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth to the evolution of our own solar system. It will build on the Hubble Space Telescope's discoveries.”

Gisborne astronomer John Drummond sighted the JWST heading to its destination while looking through one of his telescopes in early January.

“When they were working on the Hubble (space telescope) in the early 90s, even at that stage they knew they needed something bigger,” Mr Drummond said.

The JWST is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble telescope and its primary mirror is six times larger than that on the Hubble.

It contains 2000 watts of radiation and has four instruments altogether.

A sunshield the size of a tennis court is attached to the telescope to keep the camera cool.

“It has five layers of this special material that will point at the sun, so the sun will always see the shield,” Mr Drummond said.

There is just over 48 grams of gold in the Webb mirror — equivalent to the mass of a golf ball.

Gold is a highly reflective material at infrared wavelengths. It helps focus light from distant objects on to the telescope's instruments.

The Lagrange point 2 is 1.5 million kilometres away from Earth — four times the distance from Earth to the Moon.

The JWST mission is set for five years but could go longer, Mr Drummond says.

He believes the JWST will find galaxies from the beginning of time.

“They'll find that these baby galaxies will be smaller and quite oddly shared, irregular type things, as opposed to most galaxies with the spirals,” Mr Drummond said.

NASA has estimated it will be able to see what the universe looked like around a quarter of a billion years ago.

You can expect to see the first images taken by the JWST around May.