How the Webb telescope expanded my universe

I HAVE a confession to make: I underestimated the James Webb Space Telescope.

For years, as NASA struggled to build the designated successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, I came to think of the Webb as a problem child, ever-delayed, swallowing dollars that could have gone to other telescopes and space missions.

The telescope was not named for some sky-breaking astronomer. Rather it carried the name of a bureaucrat, former NASA Administrator James Webb, who oversaw the Apollo programme to land on the moon but also tolerated the purging of gay and lesbian people when he was a high official at the State Department. It was an infrared telescope, which would give astrophysicists a new angle on what was going on out there, but I didn’t think it could have the impact Hubble had.