Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Release Date: August 18, 2015
This episode of Behind the Webb explores the multi-tasking capabilities of one of the cameras on the Webb telescope, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph. Newly designed technology known as "microshutters" — tens of thousands of tiny shutters that open and close to allow only the light from targeted objects to enter the instrument – enables scientists to study the spectrum of more than one galaxy at a time. As many as 100 objects can be simultaneously observed.
Credit: NASA, Mary Estacion (STScI)
Release Date: August 18, 2015
This episode of Behind the Webb explores the multi-tasking capabilities of one of the cameras on the Webb telescope, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph. Newly designed technology known as "microshutters" — tens of thousands of tiny shutters that open and close to allow only the light from targeted objects to enter the instrument – enables scientists to study the spectrum of more than one galaxy at a time. As many as 100 objects can be simultaneously observed.
Credit: NASA, Mary Estacion (STScI)
