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KENDREW:  MIRI is one of the 4 instruments on board the James Webb Space

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Telescope. It's the one instrumnet onboard the telescope

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that will be observing at Mid-Infrared wavelengths, the other instruments

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focus on the near infrared parts of the spectrum

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GLASSE: NIRCam and the FGS, they work at wavelengths from

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about 1 to 4 or 5 microns. Now MIRI is unique

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on the James Webb because it operates at even longer wavelengths than that

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So we start at 5 microns and we keep going out to

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25-30 microns.   KENDREW: MIRI is actually quite a complex instrument

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It has several different observing modes onboard.

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in the instruments. So we have a camera,

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that takes images in lots of different filters across the Mid-Infrared wavelength.

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range. We also have spectroscopic modes

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so we have low-resolution spectroscopy and we also have a medium

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resolution integral field spectrograph.   GLASSE: When you look inside our own galaxy,

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you can see dusty regions and there are things going on inside those clouds

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inside the dust that you can't see because dust is essentially opaque.

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If you move out to longer wavelengths, out into the infrared, the opacity

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the amount of light that is absorbed by that dust, drops

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and so we can see not just the surface but, into the heart

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of the dusty regions. So that means we can see to the center of our own galaxy more easily

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we can see inside dusty regions where stars are being formed

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and see what's really going on when a start is formed in space.  KENDREW: We are really going

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to be able to address a huge range of science questions

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MIRI is going to be able to probe even further back into the history

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of the universe. It's going to be able to really study the atmosphere

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of planets around other stars an really be able to search for

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the signatures of molecules in those atmospheres, those are some

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a few of the highest profile science goals

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(beep beep)

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