- Jonathan Amos
- BBC science correspondent
July 13, 2022
image source,NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on the James Webb Telescope took a picture of Stephan’s Quintet.
NASA (NASA; NASA)’s newest $10 billion space telescope has captured stunning images of the “Stellar Nursery” and “Cosmic Dance.”
The James Webb Space Telescope is known as the successor to the well-known Hubble telescope. The first full-color pictures of the cosmos it took were made public.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday (July 11) released a photo showing an extremely distant galaxy as a teaser.
Scientists involved in the project are following up with additional photos to verify the wide-ranging usefulness of the Webb telescope.
The new telescope has been specially tuned to observe the sky in infrared light—the longer wavelength light beams can be sensed by the human eye.
This gives the new telescopes more ability than the previous generation to look into the depths of the universe, allowing them to detect events even more ancient – more than 13.5 billion years ago.
Astronomers are also expected to use more advanced technology on the new telescope to study the atmospheres of distant stars in hopes of detecting signs of life.
Prof Gillian Wright, a British expert who led the study of one of the four sets of infrared instruments on the Webb telescope, said the first images were just a first attempt, and they were coming.
“Whenever you look at the stars in a new way, you always see something you didn’t expect,” she said.
Professor Wright, who is also director of the UK Centre for Astronomical Technology, told the BBC: “The new data is very good, of good quality, and it took only a few hours of observation – it means that what you want to find is there. Just waiting for you to find out.”
SMACS 0723 Galaxy
image source,NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
These galactic beams travel billions of light-years to reach us.
SMACS 0723 is a massive galaxy cluster so massive that it can refract and magnify light beams from farther away, what astronomers call a “gravitational lens.” Its red arc can be seen from anywhere – that’s the point: it’s a galaxy. Not only from afar, but from even more ancient times.
The partially arced beam took 13 billion years to reach us. Another oddity here is that some of the arcs that appear on either side of the photo are actually the same object, with their beams traversing the SMACS 0723 constellation in more than one line.
The Southern Ring
image source,NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
Photographs of the Southern Ring Nebula taken in the near-infrared (left; left) and mid-infrared (Mid-infrared; right), respectively.
You’ve probably seen similar photos in those coffee table books of Hubble images. The Southern Ring Nebula, or “Octafid Nebula,” is a giant sphere of gas and dust illuminated by a decaying star. As stars age, they change the way they generate energy and repel their outer layers.
When the star becomes hot again, it burns up all the material it has expelled.
The Southern Ring Nebula is nearly half a light-year in diameter and lies about 2,000 light-years outside Earth. This constellation is called a “planetary nebula,” but it’s not actually associated with a planet. That’s because early telescope stargazers lacked the resolution and thus misused the word. The Webb telescope tries to observe how stars are born, and it also hopes to observe how stars die.
Stephan’s Quintet
image source,NASA/Esa/CSA/STScl
Photo of Stephen’s Quintet: Left by the Webb Telescope, right by the Hubble Telescope.
Stephen’s Quintet, located about 290 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus, was the first galaxy cluster to be discovered by humans. Four of the five galaxies in the cluster are trapped in a “cosmic dance” that repeatedly approaches each other.
This image, taken by the Webb telescope, doesn’t look very different from the one taken by the Hubble telescope. But the new telescope is more sensitive to infrared light and can pick up a variety of features for astronomers to study. That’s a big hope — that Webb will work at the same time as Hubble. They each have their own strengths, and comparing the photos of the two can provide scientists with a new dimension to their research.
We don’t know how long the Hubble will work, it’s 32 years old and prone to failure. But NASA officials tasked with caring for the “old war horse” have just handed in a new five-year budget. Good luck to everyone.
Carina Nebula
image source,NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
The Carina Nebula is a typical Hubble target, and this Webb version of the image presents a different look.
Carina is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky, about 7,600 light-years from Earth. Carina is a “stellar nursery,” a vast cloud of gas and dust where new stars are born.
But in this Webb photo, we don’t see much of the stars, just gas and dust. Astronomers call this a “cosmic reef,” a dividing line between dust on the bottom and gas on the top.
One of Webb’s key science goals is to study how stars form, and Carina is a great place to do that.
