A photo had just arrived on Byeol-maru’s screen. It showed swirling clouds of red and gold light, a landscape unlike anything Hyeongseop had ever seen, as if someone had painted a giant cloud portrait across the universe itself.
“Byeoli, what is this photo? It looks like a completely different world.”
“That came from the James Webb Space Telescope. It captured something very old and very far away, something our own eyes could never see.”
“Why can’t our eyes see it?”
“This telescope sees infrared light, a kind of light invisible to human eyes. Clouds of dust drifting between stars and planets block out most ordinary light, but infrared can pass right through that dust. So places that look pitch black to us look bright and clear to this telescope, almost like feeling warmth through a thick curtain even when you can’t see what’s behind it.”
Hyeongseop stared into the photo as if he might get pulled inside it. Deep within the hazy, pillar-like clouds, tiny stars seemed to be being born one by one.
“Why does this telescope even bother looking this far away?”
“Looking far away actually means looking back in time. Scientists want to know how the universe looked when it was very young, so they use this telescope to search for the oldest, farthest light they can find, gathering photographs of the universe’s childhood.”
“So is this photo showing what’s happening right now?”
“No, and that’s the most amazing part. It took hundreds of millions of years for this light to travel all the way to the telescope. So what we’re looking at is the universe as it was hundreds of millions of years ago. This telescope is a camera and a time machine at once.”
“Whoa… so this place could look completely different right now.”
“Exactly. Those stars might have already grown up and be shining brightly by now. We’re simply receiving a letter that was mailed a very, very long time ago.”
“But isn’t this telescope sitting right next to Earth? Why does it need to travel so far to send us these pictures?”
“Actually, this telescope floats all alone, very far from Earth. Even a little warmth from Earth or the Sun would disturb its delicate infrared vision. So it was sent to a distant, cold, quiet spot on purpose, where it can keep its eyes wide open and stare deep into the universe undisturbed.”
Hyeongseop looked at the strange, distant scenery once more. The thought that light sent hundreds of millions of years ago was reaching his eyes at this very moment felt like being handed an enormous secret. Somewhere out there, right now, new light was setting off on its own journey, light that would arrive as someone else’s letter far, far in the future. Hyeongseop grinned, wondering if the person who received that letter might, somehow, someday be himself.
“The James Webb Space Telescope uses infrared light to see past dust clouds, showing us what the universe looked like hundreds of millions of years ago.”
Your Turn Now
Share with someone today what you remember.
- What kind of light does this telescope see?
- Why can it see through dust clouds?
- When does the distant universe photo actually show?
(Check when ready: 1. Infrared, invisible to human eyes. 2. Infrared passes through dust. 3. Hundreds of millions of years ago, since the light took that long to arrive.)
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