The LightStar™ fiber optic illuminator uses Green, Blue, Red, and White LEDs to create a broad spectrum of colors, analogous to a 150-watt metal halide light source, reducing power use and weight. Features include electronic color management (no color wheel), built in strobe, dimming capabilities and full DMX function.

Observation of these early days in the universe’s history will shed light on perplexing questions of dark matter and energy, black holes, galaxy evolution over time, what the first stars were like, and how we arrived at the universe we experience today.

A small full-color illustration of the Earth, which is labeled in white text, appears at far left. From the Earth, a dark purple triangle begins, slowly enlarging toward the right to cover the area where a small illustration of the James Webb Space Telescope appears and a long, wavy multicolored line. The purple triangle blends into the black background as it becomes taller toward the right.

Above each segment is a sine wave pattern indicating the relative wavelength of the band. The sine wave patterns are oriented vertically. The wavelengths increase from left to right. The wave pattern above Gamma is tightest (shortest wavelength). The wave pattern above Radio is more extended (longest wavelength).

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Infrared light reveals new details in images, deepening our understanding of celestial objects. For more exploration of what we can learn from other wavelengths, visit NASA’s Universe of Learning ViewSpace Interactives.

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Visible light’s short, tight wavelengths are prone to bouncing off dust particles, making it hard for visible light to escape from a dense nebula or protoplanetary cloud of gas and dust. The longer wavelengths of infrared light slip past dust more easily, and therefore instruments that detect infrared light—like those on Webb—are able to see the objects that emitted that light inside a dusty cloud. Low-energy brown dwarfs and young protostars forming in the midst of a nebula are among the difficult-to-observe cosmic objects that Webb can study. In this way, Webb will reveal a “hidden” universe of star and planet formation that is literally not visible.

Just past this section of the third yellow label, on the far right, there is a dotted half circle. To the right of the dotted half circle are more than a dozen small circles with dots at the center that represent galaxies. They appear in various shades of blue, purple, and pink. No two are the same, though all appear significantly smaller than Earth or Webb at left.

Infographic titled “Electomagnetic Spectrum” comparing the wavelengths of light that can be detected by the Hubble, Webb, and Spitzer space telescopes.

The LightStar™ fiber optic illuminator uses Green, Blue, Red, and White LEDs to create a broad spectrum of colors, analogous to a 150-watt metal halide light source, reducing power use and weight. Features include electronic color management (no color wheel), built in strobe, dimming capabilities and full DMX function.

Where the small telescope appears through about a third of the width of the graphic, the label reads “24 – 100 million light-years.” Approximately where this label ends, just about a third of the way across the overall graphic, is a second vertical blue line.

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The rainbow of light that the human eye can see is a small portion of the total range of light, known in science as the electromagnetic spectrum. Telescopes can be engineered to detect light outside the visible range to show us otherwise hidden regions of space. The James Webb Space Telescope detects near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths, the light beyond the red end of the visible spectrum.

Below the wavelength bar are line sketches of three telescopes, labeled with the telescope name and wavelength range. From left to right: The Hubble Space Telescope has a wavelength range of 90 to 2,500 nanometers, corresponding to the right-most portion of the Ultraviolet segment, all of the Visible, and the left-most sliver of the Infrared segment. The James Webb Space Telescope has a wavelength range of 600 to 28,500 nanometers, corresponding to a sliver of red visible light and the left half of the Infrared segment. The Spitzer Space Telescope has a wavelength range of 3,000 to 160,000 nanometers, corresponding to the right half of the Infrared segment.

The diagram includes a horizontal bar consisting of seven labeled segments representing seven different bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. From left to right these are: Gamma, X-Ray, Ultraviolet, Visible, Infrared, Microwave, and Radio. Gamma, X-ray, Microwave, and Radio segments are all colored in shades of gray. The Ultraviolet segment is various shades of purple. The Infrared segments is shades of red and orange. The Visible segment is rainbow, from purple on the left to red on the right.

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At the bottom of the graphic, there is a thin yellow bar. It includes several labels. Below Earth, but before the telescope illustration appears, the label reads “24 M L-Ys” (or light-years). A blue vertical line appears over the yellow bar just below the telescope illustration above.

A wavy line begins at the mirrors of the telescope and extends horizontally to the right side of the graphic to the location of the galaxies. The line appears red, with longer waves at left. It slowly changes into orange and yellow, and the waves become tighter. As the colors of the waves change to green and blue, the waves appear even tighter. As the line becomes purple, the waves are the closest to one another. This line is labeled “Light redshifted (stretched) by expansion of space.”

Finally, infrared light holds clues to many mysteries from the beginning of everything, the first stars and galaxies in the early universe, after the big bang. Through a process called cosmological redshifting, light is stretched as the universe expands, so light from stars that is emitted in shorter ultraviolet and visible wavelengths is stretched to the longer wavelengths of infrared light.

This video begins in visible light and ends with an image in infrared light. Note what each wavelength reveals and conceals. Get video details and downloads in the Video gallery, or download video captions (no audio, VTT), and transcript of the audio description (Word Doc, 19 KB). Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Bacon (STScI).

First, some objects are just better observed in infrared wavelengths. Some bodies of matter that are cool and do not emit much energy or visible brightness, like people or a young planet, still radiate in the infrared. Humans perceive this as heat, while some other animals, like snakes, are able to “see” infrared energy.