NASA has shared a “teaser” image ahead of next week’s eagerly awaited release of the first images of deep space from its James Webb Space Telescope.
The $10bn (£7.4bn) observatory was launched to look back in time to the dawn of the universe and capture what happened just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
Its first science-quality photos are due to be released to the public on July 12, but the US space agency has provided an engineering test photo as a sneak preview.
The image is the result of 72 exposures over 32 hours and shows an array of distant stars and galaxies.
It has some “rough” qualities, NASA said in a statement, but is still “among the deepest images of the universe ever taken” and offers a “tempting glimpse” at what will be revealed weeks, months and years into the future.
“When this image was taken, I was excited to see clearly all the detailed structure in these faint galaxies,” said Neil Rowlands, program scientist for Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor at Honeywell Aerospace.
Exciting: NASA has shared a ‘teaser’ image ahead of next week’s eagerly anticipated release of the first deep space images from its James Webb Space Telescope
The $10 billion observatory was launched to look back in time to the dawn of the universe and capture what happened just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang
James Webb Space Telescope instruments
NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) infrared camera from the edge of the visible through the near infrared
NIRSpec (Near InfraRed Spectrograph) will also perform spectroscopy in the same wavelength range.
MIRI (Mid Infrared Instrument) will measure the mid to long infrared wavelength range from 5 to 27 micrometers.
The FGS/NIRISS (Fine-Targeting Sensor and Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph) is used to stabilize the observatory’s line-of-sight during science observations.
Jane Rigby, Webb’s operations scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said that “the faintest spots in this image are exactly the types of faint galaxies that Webb will be studying in its first year of science operations.”
Astronomers have previously said the first images are sure to deliver the much-anticipated “wow” when they are unveiled next week.
NASA added that it will be “a unique moment for all of us to stop and admire a sight that humanity has never seen before”.
The U.S. space agency, which runs the Webb project, previously released a set of engineering photos to demonstrate that all the hardware is working as it should on astronomy’s new superspace telescope.
These images show slightly different views of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy in our Milky Way, but it’s unclear what the first full-color images will capture.
Webb goes through a six-month preparation period before it can begin science work, calibrating its instruments to the space environment and aligning its mirrors.
It was launched into space on December 25 last year and later settled into an orbit one million miles from our planet.
Scientists hope the observatory – a replacement for the 32-year-old Hubble Space Telescope – will be able to peer back in time 13.5 billion years to a point within just 100-200 million years of the Big Bang.
It has an ambitious mission to explore the early universe, determine how fast it is expanding now, and analyze objects throughout the cosmos, ranging from galaxies to exoplanets.
The telescope has a famous gold mirror that consists of 18 individual hexagonal segments, each controlled by seven actuators that allow for precise movement and focusing.
In February, NASA revealed the first images from James Webb. The result was an image mosaic of 18 randomly arranged points of starlight (pictured), the product of Webb’s misaligned mirror segments, all reflecting light from the same star back to its secondary mirror
The images include a ‘selfie’ of the $10bn (£7.4bn) telescope’s primary mirror (pictured)
This mosaic of images was created by pointing the telescope at a bright isolated star in the constellation Ursa Major known as HD 84406
They had to be deployed slowly and meticulously over the past six months to prepare James Webb for its science mission.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said last week that Webb will be able to look farther into space than any telescope before it.
“It will study objects in the Solar System and the atmospheres of exoplanets orbiting other stars, giving us clues as to whether their atmospheres might be similar to ours,” he said.
“It might answer some questions we have: Where do we come from? What else is there? Who are we?
“And of course, it will answer some questions we don’t even know what they are.”
Webb’s infrared capabilities allow it to see back in time to the Big Bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago.
As the universe expanded, the light from the earliest stars shifted from the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths in which it was emitted to longer infrared wavelengths.
Astronomers will use Webb to observe the infrared universe, analyze the collected data and publish scientific papers about their findings.
In addition to what is already planned for Webb, there are unexpected discoveries that astronomers cannot predict.
James Webb’s main mirror consists of 18 hexagonal segments of gold-plated beryllium metal and is 21 feet 4 inches (6.5 meters) in diameter. It is supported by three shallow carbon fiber tubes or struts that extend from the large main mirror
Liftoff: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope successfully launched into space on December 25
In 1990, when Hubble was launched, dark energy was completely unknown. It is now one of the most exciting areas of astrophysics.
Now scientists are eagerly anticipating what secrets James Webb might uncover and what it might mean for our understanding of the universe.
Described by NASA as the leading space science observatory of the next decade, Webb will observe space primarily in the infrared spectrum, allowing it to peer through clouds of gas and dust where stars are born.
By comparison, its predecessor, Hubble, has operated primarily at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths since its launch in 1990.
Webb is about 100 times more powerful than Hubble, allowing it to observe objects at greater distances, therefore further back in time, than Hubble or any other telescope.
NASA likes to think of James Webb as Hubble’s successor rather than a replacement, as the two will work in tandem for some time.
Currently, the earliest cosmological observations date back to 330 million years after the Big Bang, but with the capacity of the Web, astronomers believe they will easily break the record.
James Webb began development in 1996 and was originally scheduled to launch in 2007, but a major redesign in 2005 pushed this back and a series of further delays saw it eventually reach orbit in the end of last year.
JAMES WEBB’S TELESCOPE
The James Webb Telescope has been described as a “time machine” that could help unlock the secrets of our universe.
The telescope will be used to look back to the first galaxies born in the early universe more than 13.5 billion years ago and observe the sources of stars, exoplanets and even the moons and planets of our solar system.
The huge telescope, already worth more than $7 billion (£5 billion), is seen as the successor to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope
The James Webb Telescope and most of its instruments have an operating temperature of approximately 40 Kelvin—about minus 387 Fahrenheit (minus 233 Celsius).
It is the largest and most powerful orbiting space telescope in the world, capable of peering back 100-200 million years after the Big Bang.
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