Open and shut case

When you squint, your eyelashes block out light closer to you, which has the effect of improving your focus on a faraway object. It's a tiny act most of us take for granted but

engineers are applying the concept of squinting in a way that will allow them to gather information about the most distant galaxies.

A team from the space agency has developed 'microshutters,' which are tiny doorways that could help orbital telescopes bring outlying stars and galaxies into better focus. The technology will go aboard the James Webb space telescope, which will replace the Hubble telescope within the next decade.

The hairlike microshutters — working in a similar way to a person's eyelashes — will enable scientists to block unwanted light from objects closer to the telescope, thus allowing it to see light from further stars and galaxies.

The devices will allow the telescope to focus on the faint light of stars and galaxies so far away, they were formed just after the Big Bang. This is because light travels at 186,000 miles per second, and it is still travelling through space from the time when the universe started.