Photographs Each oval-colored dot or orb that splashes the background of each image collected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and published on Tuesday, is an individual star or galaxy somewhere deep in the universe.
During Christmas, after decades of work, the $ 10 billion telescope was finally launched into space and sent to orbit the Sun at a gravitationally stable point 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. After deploying his 22-meter (70-foot) parasol, he placed his giant gold hexagonal mirror in place for his detectors to begin absorbing his first light.
Photons of forged objects more than 13 billion years ago bouncing in the mirrors of the space observatory are being redirected to their instruments. A collection of cameras take snapshots of deep space, while spectrometers study the frequencies of light detected to get an idea of the chemical composition of what we are seeing.
Now, the first images taken by the JWST have arrived that reveal some of the most spectacular cosmic phenomena that take place in space. These photos, which took hours to capture and are a composite of many images, were posted online this week by NASA and its friends after the first photo was revealed on Monday. Let’s run for them.
The Carina Nebula [full-res sources] is shown below. The extensive orange-brown material is a gigantic wall of dust cut by ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds coming from numerous massive, hot young stars. The dust carpet is the edge of a cavity surrounding a bubble that houses a thriving stellar nursery, known as NGC 3324, over an area surrounded by bright ionized gas. The highest points of the cavity extend about seven light-years from top to bottom in the image.
The Carina Nebula, as captured by the JWST … Click to enlarge or view article links for super high resolution. All images accredited to: NASA, ESA, CSA and STScI
The death of a star can be just as dramatic. The southern ring [full-res sources] it is a planetary nebula, where a star 2,500 light-years away has been spilling a wrapper of gas and dust for thousands of years as it slowly fades away. The image on the left is from JWST’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the one on the right is from its Medium Infrared Instrument (MIRI). Viewing the object at slightly different wavelengths reveals new features, such as two stars orbiting in the center of the image on the right.
On the left, the JWST NIRCam image of the south ring, and on the right, the MIRI photograph
The largest image of the JWST [full-res source] presents Stephan’s Quintet: a collection of four galaxies (NGC 7317, NGC 7318A, NGC 7318B, and NGC 7319) about 290 million light-years away from us; and a fifth galaxy, NGC 7320, on the left side of the image, which is actually much closer, 40 million light-years from Earth. The rotating mass shows how galaxies can interact with each other, colliding with each other to stimulate the growth of new stars. Here is a link to the same image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope for comparison.
Five celebrities … Stephan’s Galaxy Quintet
Finally, the fourth image released on Tuesday is actually a graph detailing the light spectrum of WASP-96b, an exoplanet 1,150 light-years away. Despite being 1.2 times the diameter of Jupiter, it contains less than half the mass, making WASP-96b essentially a massive gas ball. The spectrum reveals that the exoplanet is home to water and has a blurry atmosphere that contains clouds.
Diagram showing the composition of the atmosphere of the hot gas exoplanet Wasp 96b
These four images are not just beautiful images: a group of experts at a NASA briefing explained Tuesday that the photos are proof that the JWST works. It can capture the light of the most distant galaxies, born more than 13 billion years ago when the universe was young, to the nearby exoplanets of another world.
“How could you not discover things if you’re a hundred times more powerful than previous telescopes,” excited Jane Rigby, a scientist in the telescope’s operations project. “From the data I’ve seen so far, from the work we’ve seen … the first week of science will be revolutionary. These are incredible capabilities we’ve never had.”
The telescope could help cosmologists study the expansion of the universe. Rigby said the probe could measure the light from Cepheid stars, red giants and galaxies to calculate their precise distances from Earth, allowing researchers to estimate the Hubble constant, a hotly contested measure of how quickly it s ‘is expanding the universe.
As humanity’s most powerful infrared telescope, the JWST will allow astronomers to gain a broader, deeper view of the universe with the best resolution to date. Knicole Colón, an assistant scientist on the exoplanet science project, said there are plans to target it in the TRAPPIST system, a solar system where some planets could have the right environmental conditions to sustain life.
“There are seven planets, and several of them are considered to be in the habitable zone of this star, which means they have the right temperature to be able to have liquid water on their surface,” he said. “What we’re going to do is check first if they have an atmosphere … If we confirm that there’s an atmosphere, what can we say about the composition? It’s a kind of step-by-step process, but this is our main opportunity to study some of it. potentially. habitable planets “.
For those who can’t wait to see more images of the JWST, more will be released on Thursday. The next set of photos, however, will be more familiar to us: they will represent objects within our own Solar System. The telescope is expected to reveal unprecedented details of the planets’ surfaces. “I have no doubt we will see spectacular things from the Solar System soon,” said Klaus Pontoppidan, a project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
The JWST images remind us that the space is incredibly huge and full of fantastic objects from those we know. ®