[InterceptPoint]

Interesting article. This caught my eye:

“The Webb will be both bigger and located in a darker part of space than Hubble, enabling it to capture images from the faintest galaxies.”

Just how do you find “a darker part of space”?

[zeestephen]

It will be put in a Lagrangian point orbit called “L2,” which is about 1 million miles from Earth

I think there are 5 total Earth-Sun Lagrangian points.

L2 is a point in space where the gravitational pull from the Earth and Sun combine to keep a satellite almost in exactly the same place.

The satellite actually orbits the L2 point.

But the result is that it tracks the Earth almost exactly as they both orbit the Sun.

The satellite will have its “back” to the sun, Earth and Moon with a huge amount insulation between.

Even the sun light reflected off the Earth and Moon has enough “heat” to disable the telescope, which must be chilled close to absolute zero, as I recall.

[dragnet2]

As the JWST must be kept very cold to make accurate observations of distant astronomical objects, it has been designed with a large sunshield that blocks light and heat from the Sun. In order for such a shield to work properly, the Sun's rays must be constantly coming from the same direction. To achieve this outcome, JWST will be put into a relatively large "halo orbit" around L2. From the L2 point, the Earth constantly shades one third of the Sun's light as it periodically wobbles about the Earth-Moon barycenter; occasionally lunar eclipses will partially obscure more of the solar disk. However, the radius of the telescope's orbit around L2 will be so large that neither the Earth nor Moon will eclipse the Sun, allowing the shield to deal with a relatively constant sunlight environment. This was considered to be more important than attempting to utilize the Earth's shadow to block some of the sunlight, in an orbit nearer the exact L2 point.[citation needed] JWST's sunshield, made of polyimide film, has membranes coated with aluminum on one side and silicon on the other.

The sunshield is designed to be folded twelve times so it will fit within the Ariane 5 rocket's 4.57 m × 16.19 m shroud. Once deployed at the L2 point, it will unfold to 12.2 m × 18 m. The sunshield was hand-assembled at Man Tech (NeXolve) in Huntsville, Alabama before it was delivered to Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California for testing.

[TigersEye]

Just how do you find “a darker part of space”?

It's just opposite of a whiter shade of pale.

[HandyDandy]

The darker part of space is located between dark matter and dark energy. It is called dark light.

[WhiskeyX]

Just how do you find “a darker part of space”?

First, you position the observatory 930,000 miles away from the Earth to minimize the amount of “Earth Shine” which can come into the instrument’s view. Second, you put the observatory into an orbit around the L2 Lagrangian Point, so the observatory avoids the Earth’s shadow and potential eclipses of the Sun and Moon which could interfere with observations due to variations in the ambient infrared and light backgrounds. Such a position also minimizes exposure to the reflected light from the changing Moon phases. This also keeps the Earth and the Sun together behind the observatory’s sun shade as the Earth and the observatory orbit together around the Sun.