Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news about fascinating discoveries, scientific breakthroughs and more.
CNN
—
A first look at how the James Webb Space Telescope will change The way people see the universe has arrived
President Joe Biden released one of the first images of the web, and it’s a deep view of the universe.
The image shows SMACS 0723, where a large cluster of galaxies acts as a magnifying glass for objects behind them. Called gravitational lensing, Webb created the first deep-field view of incredibly old and distant, faint galaxies.
The presentation took place during a preview event at the White House with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
According to Nelson, “This is the deepest picture of our universe ever taken.
Some of these distant galaxies and star clusters have never been seen before. The galaxy is shown as it formed 4.6 billion years ago.
“This slice of the vast universe covers a portion of the sky roughly the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground,” a NASA release said.
The image, captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera, is composed of images taken at different wavelengths of light over 12.5 hours. It took weeks for the Hubble Space Telescope to capture the deep fields.
The remaining high-resolution color images will debut on Tuesday, July 12.
The space probe, which launched in December, will be able to take a peek inside Atmospheres of exoplanets And Consider some of the first galaxies Created after the universe began by seeing them through infrared light invisible to the human eye.
The first image release highlights Webb’s scientific capabilities and his ability to create spectacular images of his massive gold mirror and scientific instruments.
Several events are taking place during the film’s release on Tuesday, all of which will be streamed live NASA website.
Opening remarks by NASA leadership and the Webb team will begin at 9:45 a.m. ET on Tuesday, followed by the image release broadcast beginning at 10:30 a.m. ET. The images will be revealed one by one, and a news conference at 12:30 PM ET will provide details on them.
NASA shared Webb’s first cosmic targets on Friday, providing a teaser of what else will be in Tuesday’s image release: the Carina Nebula, WASP-96b, the Southern Ring Nebula and Stephen’s Quintet.
Located 7,600 light-years away, the Carina Nebula is a stellar nursery where stars are born. It is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky and is home to many stars much larger than our Sun.
Webb’s study of the gas giant WASP-96b will be the first full-color spectrum of an exoplanet. The spectrum will include different wavelengths of light, revealing new information about the planet, such as whether it has an atmosphere. Discovered in 2014, WASP-96b is located 1,150 light-years from Earth. It has half the mass of Jupiter and orbits its star every 3.4 days.
The Southern Ring Nebula, also known as the “Eight-Burst,” is 2,000 light-years from Earth. This large planetary nebula consists of an expanding cloud of gas surrounding a dying star.
Stephen’s Quintet’s view of the space telescope will reveal how galaxies interact with each other. First discovered in 1787, this small galaxy is located 290 million light-years away in the Pegasus constellation. According to a NASA report, four of the five galaxies in the group are “locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters”.
The targets were selected by an international team consisting of members from NASA, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
This will be the first of many images from Webb, the most powerful telescope ever launched into space. The mission, originally expected to last 10 years, has enough excess fuel to operate for 20 years, according to NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy.
“By searching for distant galaxies after the Big Bang, Webb can look back in time to the billions of light years it took us to find ourselves in those galaxies,” said Jonathan Gardner, Webb Deputy Senior Program Scientist at NASA. , during a recent news conference. “The Web is bigger than Hubble, so we can see fainter galaxies in the distance.”
The telescope’s initial goal is to look at the universe’s first stars and galaxies, essentially “watching the universe turn on the lights for the first time,” said Eric Smith, Webb program scientist and NASA Astrophysics Division principal scientist.
Smith has worked on Webb since the project began in the mid-1990s.
“The James Webb Space Telescope will give us a new and powerful set of eyes to explore our universe.” Smith wrote in an update On NASA’s website. “The world will be new again.”
