Baby galaxies forming in the young universe more than 13 billion years ago wowed onlookers when NASA released the first image from the James Webb Space Telescope on Monday night.
The picture shows a galaxy cluster called SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago – about the time Earth formed – acting as a gravitational lens and magnifying the far more distant and older galaxies that appear behind her.
Bill Nelson, NASA administrator, unveiled the image at a White House briefing with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. He said the oldest galaxies in the picture may date back to within 300 million years of the birth of the universe 13.8 billion years ago.
The “deep-field” image covers a piece of sky the size of a grain of sand, held at arm’s length by someone on the ground, Nelson said. It is a composite made of images of different infrared wavelengths over a 12-hour period.
NASA and its partner, the European Space Agency, will release four more early science observations from the $10 billion telescope on Tuesday.
One will involve the analysis of a planet orbiting a distant star. The spectrum of the gas giant planet Wasp-96b, orbiting a star 1,150 light-years away, will reveal the chemical composition of its atmosphere.
Astronomers hope that this technique will eventually show which planets are likely to have life – for example, by the presence of methane, oxygen and organic molecules – although the discovery of another inhabited world is not expected in the near future.
The three other observations will show: the Carina Nebula, a “stellar nursery” 7,600 light-years away; the Southern Ring Nebula, a giant expanding cloud of gas 2,000 light-years away; and the Stefan Quintet, a compact group of five galaxies 290 million light-years from Earth.
“These science images come from a five-day observation,” said Mark McCaughrean, ESA’s senior science advisor. “Think about what’s coming in the coming months and years.”
This week’s Webb photos aren’t the first seen by the public — NASA released several “engineering images” last month from the telescope’s commissioning period — but they are the first full-color science images.
Webb’s images have false color added to show the observed wavelengths because they were recorded in the infrared region, beyond the range of human eyes. In contrast, the Hubble Space Telescope, still operating after 32 years in orbit, observes visible light.
A White House presentation with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris unveiled the first image from the Webb Telescope on Monday night © NASA TV/AFP/Getty Images
After three decades of design and construction, plagued by delays and cost overruns, Webb pulled off a perfect launch on an Ariane 5 rocket last Christmas.
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The launcher pointed Webb so precisely in the right direction to its destination, the “second Lagrange point” 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, that the spacecraft had to use less fuel than expected for the final positioning, said Richard Ellis, professor of astrophysics at University College London, who has been involved in the project since its early years. Therefore, it has more fuel left to stay in place during the mission.
“The precision of the launch extended the expected life of the telescope,” he said. “The original specification was five years with a target of 10. Now Webb can easily achieve 10 years and can last 15.”
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