What is the specified diameter of the James Webb Space Telescope's primary mirror?
Answer
6.5 meters
The light-gathering capacity of a telescope is directly tied to the size of its main optical component. For the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), engineering focused on maximizing this capability, resulting in a primary mirror structure that spans a diameter of 6.5 meters. This massive size is necessary to efficiently capture the extremely faint photons originating from the universe's earliest epochs, especially given the challenges associated with observing highly redshifted infrared light across billions of light-years.
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