NASA excited the James Webb Space Telescope with another impressive test photo just before the big premiere to show off the observatory’s first full-color images.
The US space agency unveiled a new image on Thursday that comes from one of the huge infrared telescope’s instruments, the Fine Guidance Sensor. NASA nonchalantly shared the photo on social media to demonstrate Webb’s power and clarity: an almost immeasurably deep view of the universe in red monochrome.
The surprise teaser came just six days before the agency and its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, plan to release the first batch of real, full-color images on July 12. Despite NASA Administrator Bill Nelson’s announcement that the cache would include the deepest image of the universe ever taken, this image — a simple engineering test of Webb’s fine-tuning sensor — already broke the current record for the farthest infrared view in space. scientists said.
SEE ALSO: The Webb Telescope just snapped the deepest picture of the universe ever Tweet may have been deleted (opens in new tab)
To some people, the new snapshot (at the beginning of this story) might not look like anything too impressive – at best, maybe a sesame seed on a hamburger bun or mosquitoes smeared on a car windshield. But what they’re looking at is the abyss: just beyond a handful of bright stars with giant spikes of light are galaxies full of solar systems.
That’s right: each of these tiny specks can contain hundreds of billions of stars and planets. Within that single frame are thousands of faint galaxies, according to the telescope team, many of them in the distant, early universe. In astronomy, looking further afield becomes looking into the past because light and other forms of radiation take longer to reach us.
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As Jane Rigby, a project scientist at NASA, once said during the observatory’s early calibration tests, “There’s no way Webb could look … at any point in the sky and not go incredibly deep.”
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This is true in this case. The primary task of the fine-tuning sensor, created by Canada, is to target and hold space targets. Taking photos is just an additional feature. When the photo was taken, engineers were testing the telescope’s ability to “roll onto its side like an airplane in flight, lock onto a star, and roll over,” NASA explained in a blog post. This might trigger a visual for some recent Top Gun: Maverick lovers.
The image is the result of 72 exposures over 32 hours, layered on top of each other. The jagged edges of the photo are due to overlapping frames, according to the post.
“There’s no way Webb could look … at any point in the sky and not go incredibly deep.”
Webb, launched into space on Christmas morning six months ago, will observe some of the oldest, faintest lights in the universe. Astronomers expect Webb’s science to ignite a golden age in our understanding of the universe.
The powerful $10 billion infrared telescope will survey a period less than 300 million years after the Big Bang, when many of the first stars and galaxies were born. Scientists will also use it to peer into the atmospheres of other worlds. Findings of water and methane, for example – some of the basic ingredients of life – can be signs of potentially life-friendly environments.
The powerful $10 billion James Webb Infrared Space Telescope will examine a period less than 300 million years after the Big Bang, when many of the first stars and galaxies were born. Credit: NASA
NASA officials stressed Thursday that the test photo is still “rough around the edges” and won’t hold anything back from the quality of the images that will appear soon on July 12. This photo is not in full color and will not pass the standard required for scientific analysis, they said.
Engineers toned the data in a red filter, just as in previous test images, to show contrast. The sharp hexagonal spikes protruding from the stars are the result of Webb’s hexagonal mirror segments. This affects the way light travels, causing diffraction.
The stars also appear to have holes in their centers, a feature that will not be present in the upcoming images, according to Webb’s team. The engineers said the holes were there because the exposures lacked “dithering.”
“Dithering is when the telescope repositions itself slightly between each exposure,” according to NASA. “The centers of bright stars appear black because they saturate Webb’s detectors, and the telescope’s pointing does not change across exposures to capture the center from different pixels in the camera’s detectors.”
The upcoming images and science data will be released during a broadcast event beginning at 10:30 a.m. ET on July 12 from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The public can watch live broadcasts on NASA TV.
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