If it could see a bumblebee on the moon could it detect a while on Jupiters moons ? Can anyone do the calculations ?
It’s designed to see things very very far away, which are all severely redshifted. It’s mostly an infrared camera. In the human visual range of light frequencies, is camera sensors only go up to orange.
So no, it can’t detect a blue whale… ;-)
Re:James Webb is fully deployed
by moffkalast on Sunday January 09, 2022 @07:47AM
(#29862768)
Well it can allegedly make photos of Jupiter that would be comparable of doing them during a close flyby, but that's likely not good enough for something of that sort. You'd have to see things through kilometers of ice.
According to the mission director SmarterEveryDay interviewed on his YouTube channel recently, the James Webb Space Telescope is so sensitive it could detect the heat signature of a bumblebee at the distance of the moon.
I’m pretty sure if you asked the astronomers if you could put a 5 Watt webcam on the dark side of their sun shield for the social media clicks, they’d tell you to fuck right off to L3…