A test image from the James Webb telescope, one of the deepest images in the universe ever taken.
NASA has provided a tempting teaser photo ahead of the long-awaited release next week of the first deep-space images from the James Webb telescope, an instrument so powerful it can look at the origins of the universe.
The $ 10 billion observatory, launched in December last year and now orbiting the Sun a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from Earth, can look where no telescope has looked before. thanks to its huge primary mirror and instruments that focus on the infrared, which allows it. to look through the dust and gas.
The first fully formed images will be released on July 12, but NASA provided an engineering test photo on Wednesday, the result of 72 exposures over 32 hours showing a set of distant stars and galaxies.
The image has some “rough” qualities, NASA said in a statement, but it is still “among the deepest images in the universe ever taken” and offers a “tempting view” of what will be revealed in the coming years. weeks, months and years.
“When this image was made, I was thrilled to see clearly the entire detailed structure of these faint galaxies,” said Neil Rowlands, a scientist in Webb’s thin guide sensor program at Honeywell Aerospace.
Jane Rigby, Webb’s operations scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said the “weakest spots in this image are exactly the types of faint galaxies Webb will study in his first year of scientific operations.”
This brochure image provided by NASA shows an artistic interpretation of the James Webb Space Telescope.
NASA administrator Bill Nelson said last week that Webb is capable of looking more at the cosmos than any previous telescope.
“It will explore objects in the solar system and atmospheres of exoplanets orbiting other stars, giving us clues as to whether their atmospheres are potentially similar to ours,” he said.
“You can answer some questions we have: where do we come from? What else is out there? Who are we? And, of course, you will answer some questions that we don’t even know what the questions are.”
Webb’s infrared capabilities allow it to look back in time to the Big Bang, which happened 13.8 billion years ago.
As the Universe expands, the light from the first stars changes from the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths at which it has been emitted, to longer infrared wavelengths, which Webb is equipped to detect with an unprecedented resolution.
Today, the first cosmological observations date back to 330 million years after the Big Bang, but with Webb’s capabilities, astronomers believe they will easily break the record.
Webb Telescope: NASA will reveal the deepest image ever made of the universe
© 2022 AFP
Citation: NASA publishes the “teaser” image of the James Webb telescope (2022, July 7) retrieved July 7, 2022 from
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