NASA presented this Monday (11) the first processed and color image of the James Webb Space Telescope. The event was held at the White House, with President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in attendance.
To show the capability of the new satellite, the image chosen was that of the object cataloged as SMACS 0723. But don’t worry about decorating, because they’ve already tried to rename the look as Webb’s First Deep Field.
It is in essence a set of clusters of galaxies that act as a powerful gravitational lens and thereby magnify images of more distant objects. With this, it is possible to delve into the depths of the Universe.
“There are points in this image whose light has traveled 13 billion years to reach us,” Nelson said, stressing that in future observations Webb intends to go even deeper, capturing objects whose light was emitted 13.5 billion years ago – “only” 300 million years after the Big Bang, the moment of origin of the cosmos as we know it.
This is the main mission of Webb, a project that took two decades and more than US$ 10 billion, with the aim of seeing farther and allowing astronomers to see the first galaxies in the Universe. Since light is very fast, but not instantaneous, it takes time to cross cosmic distances. And the further away an object, the longer it takes its light to reach us. That’s why it’s possible to see galaxies as they were billions of years ago even today – they just need to be billions of light years away.
Focused on capturing infrared light, it will have the most varied uses. In addition to peering into the depths of the cosmos, it will also allow the study of objects inside and outside our galaxy, the Milky Way, as well as stars in the Solar System itself.
Launched on the European Ariane 5 rocket in December 2021, it spent six months in space commissioning, preparing its systems for full operation. With the presentation of the first image, the scientific phase of the project has now officially started.
NASA will also release, at an event this Tuesday (12), four other images – three photos themselves and a spectrum, a graphic that represents the “signature of light” of a given object.
The latter will be from the exoplanet Wasp-96b, a gas giant about half the mass of Jupiter that orbits its star, completing one revolution in just 3.4 days. Discovered in 2014, it is an ideal target for atmospheric studies, and the spectrum produced by Webb will allow us to determine the composition of its atmosphere.
The three images will be as follows:
Carina Nebula: One of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky, located about 7,600 light-years from Earth. It is a large stellar nursery, home to many high-mass stars, much larger than the Sun.
Southern Ring Nebula: This is a planetary nebula, the name given to the expanding cloud produced by the death of a star. It is, in that sense, the opposite of the Carina nebula, which is a nursery of stars. About half a light-year in diameter and located some 2,000 light-years from Earth, the Southern Ring Nebula should look particularly charming under the Webb’s infrared gaze.
Stephan’s Quintet: Jumping to extragalactic targets, Stephan’s Quintet is a group of galaxies located about 290 million light-years from here in the constellation Pegasus. It was the first compact group of galaxies discovered, in 1877 by French astronomer Édouard Stephan, and features four of five galaxies locked in a cosmic dance of frequent close encounters.
And that will be the beginning for Webb, which should quickly become, in addition to the largest and most powerful space telescope, the most productive of them, capable of generating more discoveries and scientific articles. Currently, the post belongs to Hubble.
