Today ends months of waiting. The James Webb Telescope has marked a new stage in the history of astronomy . The result of decades of effort. For starters, it has targeted multiple spectacular cosmic objects. The targets were selected by a team of representatives from NASA, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and the Space Telescope Science Institute.
“The James Webb Space Telescope will give us a powerful new set of eyes to examine our universe ,” said Webb Program Scientist Eric Smith. “We will soon begin to learn how Webb will transform our understanding of the universe.”
NASA released the long-awaited images on July 12, the space telescope’s inaugural “first light” observations and a potentially groundbreaking moment for the field of astronomy.
” What I have seen moved me, as a scientist, as an engineer and as a human being,” NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy told reporters. Now these words do not surprise us in the least. They are unprecedented views of the depths of the universe and the culmination of more than a decade of research and an investment of more than 10 billion dollars .
Scientists at James Webb had already told us that the new images of James Webb were so powerful that it was exciting just to look at them .
The five objectives, in photo:
The galaxy cluster SMACS 0723
A massive galaxy cluster in the early universe and the subject of the first snapshot released by President Joe Biden. We have seen galaxies that we had never seen before thanks to this impressive image. The level of detail is amazing. According to NASA, SMACS 0723 has such a powerful gravitational pull that it warps both space-time and the path that light subsequently travels through it. By studying this light, scientists want to learn about the origins of the cosmos and possibly even catch a glimpse of the elusive photons that came from the first stars to exist.
“As I contemplate the first deep image of the universe that the James Webb Space Telescope sends us, several things go through my mind, but especially the following. The first is the quality of the image, which demonstrates what a jewel of technology this new space telescope is. I find it fascinating that it has been possible to send a telescope capable of deploying a 6.5 meter diameter mirror into a stable orbit, 1,500,000 kilometers from Earth; and that the reflective layer of gold (50 grams in total!) that covers its 18 hexagonal segments stays aligned in the desired shape with a precision of a millionth of a millimeter. It still seems prodigious to me to see the James Webb image, despite working on an installation myself, the Gran Telescopio de Canarias, which astonishes due to the complexity and at the same time the extraordinary precision of its million optical, mechanical, electronic, and for its advanced control systems”, says Romano Corradi , director of the Gran Telescopio de Canarias through SMC.
WASP-96b
This planet is about half the mass of Jupiter, but larger. It is mainly composed of a dense range of gases . The planet, located nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth, orbits its star every 3.4 days. It was discovered in 2014.
Southern Ring Planetary Nebula
Also known as NGC 3132, it is located in the Vela constellation, 3,000 light-years away from us and with an apparent size of 12 seconds of arc. The level of detail, brightness and depth of this nebula is impressive. The colors are different from previous snapshots of this planetary nebula. The binary stars in the center of the nebula are perfectly visible.
Stephan’s Quintet
Here we see a group of five galaxies in the constellation of Pegasus close together. The show is sensational. It was the first compact galaxy group discovered in 1787. Four of the five galaxies within the quintet are caught in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters. One of them presents a very striking detail: a supermassive black hole from which James Webb has been able to extract the composition of the gas around it: atomic hydrogen, molecular hydrogen or iron atoms. A new sample of the power of this telescope.
Carina Nebula
It is the nebula that has the most luminous star in the Milky Way and today we can see new details never seen before. The Carina Nebula, located 7.5 billion light-years away from us, features two of the most massive and most luminous stars in the Milky Way. A myriad of young blue stars accompany this stellar nursery. We found it deep in the heart of the southern part of the Milky Way. This is the most detailed image yet of the famous stellar nursery.
All JWST instruments are now fully verified. The observatory and most of its instruments have an operating temperature of approximately -233 ºC.
This telescope has been described as a ‘time machine’ that could help unlock the secrets of our universe. It will be used to observe the first galaxies that were born in the early universe more than 13.5 billion years ago and to observe the sources of stars, exoplanets and even the moons and planets of our solar system.
The telescope, which was launched from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana on December 25 last year, will explore the universe in the infrared spectrum, allowing it to peer through clouds of gas and dust where stars are born . .
