Technology used by James Webb to take and transmit images
Technology
Images are infrared based, broadcast data uses radio waves in Ka band and works on Wi-Fi like S-band
(Web Desk) - What is the James Webb? In fact the space telescope has got us the best images of space to date. But the question arises that how it gets the images and sends them to Earth from space millions of miles away.
The images of James Webb space telescope aren t typical JPEGs and the Webb isn t a typical camera.
The Webb collects and transmits reams of raw data from its instruments and two very sensitive near and mid infrared sensors and a variety of attachments that might specialize for spectroscopy, coronagraphy and other activities.
The Webb images have far more detail because it was built from the ground up to broadcast data using radio waves in the Ka band or in the 25.9 gigahertz range.
It has a daily downlink capacity of roughly 57 megabytes. For low-bandwidth applications like software updates, telemetry and health checks a second antenna operating in the lower S-band, the same frequency utilized for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and garage door openers is available.
Although Webb s internal storage capacity is just roughly 68 gigabytes there are plenty of options to dump data.
A point-and-shoot camera is not actually what the telescope is. It isn t like we can just snap a photo and have it rather it is a tool used in science.
While a distant exoplanet may only appear as a dot in an image its atmosphere might be seen in great detail in a spectrogram.
Although gathering, transmitting, receiving, analyzing and presenting the data from a system like the Webb is a challenging endeavor, hundreds of researchers are gladly and eagerly devoting themselves to it now that it is operational.
