You're listening to NASA's Curious Universe.

I'm your host, Jacob Pinter.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is allowing us to look further into the depths of space and further back in time than ever before.

The largest, most powerful telescope ever sent away from our planet.

It's helping us answer big questions about black holes, galaxies, even the birth of our universe.

We want to look back and see some of the very first stars and galaxies that were born in the early universe.

What we call cosmic dawn.

Now, this is all stuff that you definitely cannot see with your naked eye.

But some scientists are pointing web in a different direction. A little closer to home. But this is all stuff that you definitely cannot see with your naked eye.

But some scientists are pointing Webb in a different direction, a little closer to home,

and objects within our solar system.

Think about Jupiter, which you definitely can see from here on Earth with a regular storebot

telescope, and even with your naked eye sometimes. So to hear what scientists are learning from Webb, I called up Catherine DeClear.

She's an astronomer at Caltech who focuses on our solar system.

When she was a student, Catherine wasn't sold on studying planets right away.

Like any good budding astronomer, she was born into galaxies and stars at first,

until she had the chance to use the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to look at our solar system's gas giants.

And my PhD advisor said, why don't we just quickly look over at Io, Jupiter's Moon, and just kind of see what it's up to?

And so we pointed the telescope at Io, and we took this image, and the image that came up on the screen was a picture of this moon

with all these little bright spots on it. And all those bright spots are heat coming off of

individual volcanoes on Io. And from night to night, I learned you could see how much heat is coming off of individual volcanoes on Io. And from night to night, I learned you could

see how much heat is coming off of which volcanoes and how that's changing over time,

...