Cameras

Unlike the type of camera that uses film to capture images, telescope cameras rely on pieces of high-tech circuitry called solid-state detectors. These detectors are similar to home video and digital cameras, yet they're much more sensitive to extremely faint light — an especially important quality given the James Webb Space Telescope's mission to study the most distant reaches of space.

From Pixels to Pictures
So how do these detectors ultimately produce an image? The detectors are electronic circuits composed of thousands of tiny, light-sensitive picture elements called pixels. The amount of light collected by each pixel is translated into a number. These numbers are then sent to a ground-based computer, which converts the numbers into a picture. The more pixels there are, the sharper the picture and the higher the resolution or the larger the area that can be imaged at once (field of view).