NASA
After 14 years of development and six months of preparation, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has finally released its first images. JWST teamThe original plan was to reveal a total of five shooting targets on the 12th local time.but US President Biden decided toPublish one of them one day in advancelet this photo become the official “opening” photo of JWST, and the remaining photos will be released tonight local time.
The target for the illumination was chosen to be the SMACS 0723 galaxy group that best represents the main mission of JWST. SMACS 0723 itself is 4.6 billion light-years away, but using the “gravitational lensing” effect of galaxy clusters, light from more distant background galaxies can also be refracted into the range visible to telescopes (pulled into thin arcs, showing Red galaxies arranged in concentric circles are all). This means that there is a good chance that the photo includes the farthest and oldest galaxies ever photographed by humans, but whether this is really the case remains to be analyzed by astronomers. More importantly, this gorgeous and sharp photo only took JWST one day (a total of 12.5 hours of exposure), and in the future when JWST selected its “Deep spaceAfter taking the photo, it is bound to be able to look at the more distant and ancient universe, and even close to the first galaxies that were formed at the earliest.
JWST has gone through numerous redesigns, delays, and overruns, and the entire project took almost 25 years and $10 billion in funding, a NASA generation’s dream.After today, JWST is finally officially launched, taking overThe aging Hubble telescopehas become the most powerful new generation telescope for mankind in space.