ETH Zurich delivered an important element of the most powerful space telescope ever made. For 14 years, Adrian Glauser worked on the calibration of a mid-infrared range measuring instrument as Senior Scientist at the ETH Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics. On 12 July, the U.S. space agency NASA published the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It tweeted: “It’s here - the deepest, sharpest infrared view of the universe to date.”
In an interview published by ETH on its website, Adrian Glauser said that the images had exceeded his expectations and given him goose bumps. He could see “the sky for the first time through a window that was previously closed”. We saw “galaxies and nebulae in such sharp focus and such detail that it left me almost speechless”.
The publication of these deep space images marked the official start of science operations for the JWST. The images will reach back 13.5 billion years, close to the estimated start point of the universe itself with the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.
Glauser anticipates “that the limits of our imagination will once again be expanded”. “Personally, I am looking forward to exploring the atmospheres of exoplanets - planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. JWST will have a lot of potential to advance this field of research by exponential orders of magnitude.”
