The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or "Webb") is a space telescope that is planned to succeed the Hubble Space Telescope as NASA's flagship astrophysics mission. The JWST will provide improved infrared resolution and sensitivity over Hubble. The primary mirror of the JWST, the Optical Telescope Element, is composed of eighteen 1.32 meters (4 ft 4 in) hexagonal mirror segments made of gold-plated beryllium which combine to create a 6.5 meters (21 ft) diameter mirror that is considerably larger than the Hubble's 2.4 meters (7 ft 10 in) mirror. Unlike the Hubble, which observes in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared (0.1 to 1 μm) spectra, the JWST will observe in a lower frequency range, from long-wavelength visible light through mid-infrared (0.6 to 28.3 μm), which will allow it to observe high redshift objects that are too old and too distant for the Hubble to observe.[8][9] The telescope must be kept very cold in order to observe in the infrared without...
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