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Hey, Stargazers! The James Webb 
Space Telescope is one of the 
most astonishing telescopes of 
modern

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times and part of what makes it 
stand apart from others are 
these iconic yellow honeycomb 
mirrors.

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So what do these mirrors do 
exactly? Well, without getting 
too bogged down by the 
mathematics - we'll

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leave that to the NASA experts - 
the mirrors significantly help 
scientists see objects

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that are billions of light years 
away and they do this because 
light is sort of like rain.

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Let me explain. When it's 
raining, a big bucket captures 
more rain than a small bucket, 
right.

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Telescopes are the same, which 
is why astronomers sometimes 
call them "light buckets." 
Bigger mirrors

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mean more light captured and 
thus we see clearer pictures, 
but JWST's mirrors aren't the 
ordinary

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kind. They have two distinctive 
features. They're bright and 
golden in color and they're 
hexagonal in

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shape. The gold color comes from 
- you guessed it - gold! Each 
segment is made up mainly of a 
metal

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called beryllium, but then this 
metal is coated in a very thin 
layer of gold. The gold 
significantly

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increases the reflectivity of a 
telescope in infrared red light 
which helps the telescope

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see things more clearly. The 
honeycomb shapes though, that's 
pretty awesome. The arrangement

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of the hexagons is distinctive. 
We didn't have a rocket that 
could launch a telescope with a

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mirror as big as the whole 
thing, so we had to fold it up. 
The segments allow for Webb to 
have

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the largest possible reflective 
surface area to make 
observations and it has the 
least amount of

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dead space in between each 
mirror once unfolded. Overall, 
this incredible engineering has 
made for

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a really cool-looking telescope 
which has already started 
sending us some really 
cool-looking images.

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And I know we can only see those 
images on a computer, but either 
way, keep looking up!