Colm O'Regan: Using a telescope to go back in time 'freaks my nut out'

The James Webb Space Telescope is grand but what about the mysteriously grainy images from its predecessor, The Hubble 

Roger Kenny Photography Actor Head Shots www.rogerkenny.ie

The JWST. Sounds like the travel agent that sponsored the prize to the Canaries on Theresa Lowe’s Where In The World. It’s actually a swanky new space telescope. Called after James Webb, a previous director of NASA who has been alleged to be part of the anti-LGBTQI+ movement in the 1950s. So let’s focus on the ST rather than the JW for now.

The telescope is six metres across, weighs six tonnes, the clear aperture of the primary Mirror is 25m² (the size of a good Dublin apartment) the mirror bit is 700kg alone. To get a sense of that, it’s the weight of a mirror your father bought second-hand at an auction in Mallow in 1988.