Design Summary Draft 2

The review by Griggs, “Why stars look spiky in images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)” (2022), informs the reader on how the JWST produces high-resolution images. Space telescopes are tasked with orbiting the solar system and collecting images in space. When capturing images with space telescopes, quality can be influenced by a diffraction spike. Diffraction spikes are the lights observed from a star due to the way they interact with the environment (Celestron, 2018). In Griggs's article, she quoted Hank Green, sharing that the difference between the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and JWST is that “Hubble stars have four spikes in a cross. JWST stars have six in a snowflake” (Green, 2022). The main imagers used by the JWST are its Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), Near InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec), and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) (Adkins, 2022). NIRCam focuses on detecting dimmer objects that are in the presence of brighter light sources, which is done by shielding the NIRCam from the brighter light. NIRSpec is a spectrograph, that breaks down information on the image's light into a spectrum. After collecting data on the light emitted from the object, analysis is done to discover the properties of the image. Both NIRCam and NIRSpec perform within the 0.6 to 5 micron range. MIRI on the other hand is a combination of a camera and spectrograph, capable of capturing images that are transparent to the naked eye. With these advanced features, the JWST is capable of producing images with more diffraction spikes thus refining the clarity and sharpness of the images. Given the effectiveness of the JWST, when innovating newer models of space telescopes, engineers should look to its hexagonal mirrors, strut positioning and NIRCams.