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Webb Space Telescope Sends First Full-Color Image of Distant Galaxies

July 12, 2022

The first full-color image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, a revolutionary apparatus designed to peer through the cosmos to the dawn of the universe, shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb’s First Deep Field, in a composite made from images at different wavelengths taken with a Near-Infrared Camera and released July 11, 2022.

 

Biden unveils Webb space telescope's first full-color image of distant galaxies

By Jeff Mason  and Steve Gorman

WASHINGTON, July 11, 2022 (Reuters) -

U.S. President Joe Biden, pausing from political pressures to bask in the glow of the cosmos, on Monday released the debut photo from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope - an image of a galaxy cluster revealing the most detailed glimpse of the early universe ever seen.

The White House sneak peek of Webb's first high-resolution, full-color image came on the eve of a larger unveiling of photos and spectrographic data that NASA plans to showcase on Tuesday at the Goddard Space Flight Center in suburban Maryland.

The $9 billion Webb observatory, the largest and most powerful space science telescope ever launched, was designed to peer through the cosmos to the dawn of the known universe, ushering in a revolutionary era of astronomical discovery.

The image showcased by Biden and NASA chief Bill Nelson showed the 4.6 billion-year-old galaxy cluster named SMACS 0723, whose combined mass acts as a "gravitational lens," distorting space to greatly magnify the light coming from more distant galaxies behind it.

At least one of the faint, older specs of light appearing in the "background" of the photo - a composite of images of different wavelengths of light - dates back more than 13 billion years, Nelson said. That makes it just 800 million years younger than the Big Bang, the theoretical flashpoint that set the expansion of the known universe in motion some 13.8 billion years ago.

"It's a new window into the history of our universe," Biden said before the picture was unveiled. "And today we're going to get a glimpse of the first light to shine through that window: light from other worlds, orbiting stars far beyond our own. It's astounding to me."

He was joined at the Old Executive Office Building of the White House complex by Vice President Kamala Harris, who chairs the U.S. National Space Council.

FROM GRAIN OF SAND IN THE SKY

On Friday, the space agency posted a list of five celestial subjects chosen for its showcase debut of Webb. These include SMACS 0723, a bejeweled-like sliver of the distant cosmos that according to NASA offers "the most detailed view of the early universe to date." It also constitutes the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant cosmos ever taken.

The thousands of galaxies were captured in a tiny patch of the sky roughly the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length by someone standing on Earth, Nelson said.

Webb was constructed under contract by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp . It was launched to space for NASA and its European and Canadian counterparts on Christmas Day 2021 from French Guiana, on the northeastern coast of South America.

The highly anticipated release of its first imagery follows six months of remotely unfurling Webb's various components, aligning its mirrors and calibrating instruments.

With Webb now finely tuned and fully focused, scientists will embark on a competitively selected list of missions exploring the evolution of galaxies, the life cycles of stars, the atmospheres of distant exoplanets and the moons of our outer solar system.

Built to view its subjects chiefly in the infrared spectrum, Webb is about 100 times more sensitive than its 30-year-old predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, which operates mainly at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.

The much larger light-collecting surface of Webb's primary mirror - an array of 18 hexagonal segments of gold-coated beryllium metal - enables it to observe objects at greater distances, thus further back in time, than Hubble or any other telescope.

All five of Webb's introductory targets were previously known to scientists. Among them are two enormous clouds of gas and dust blasted into space by stellar explosions to form incubators for new stars - the Carina Nebula and the Southern Ring Nebula, each thousands of light years away from Earth.

The collection also includes a galaxy clusters known as Stephan's Quintet, which was first discovered in 1877 and encompasses several galaxies described by NASA as "locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters."

NASA will also present Webb's first spectrographic analysis of an exoplanet - one roughly half the mass of Jupiter that lies more than 1,100 light years away - revealing the molecular signatures of filtered light passing through its atmosphere.

Reporting by Jeff Mason in Wasington; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington; Editing by Richard Chang

Biden unveils Webb space telescope's first full-color image of distant galaxies | Reuters

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James Webb telescope takes super sharp view of early cosmos

BBC, July 11, 2022

The first full-colour picture from the new James Webb Space Telescope has been released - and it doesn't disappoint.

The image is said to be the deepest, most detailed infrared view of the Universe to date, containing the light from galaxies that has taken many billions of years to reach us.

US President Joe Biden was shown the image during a White House briefing.

Further debut pictures from James Webb are due to be released by Nasa in a global presentation on Tuesday.

"These images are going to remind the world that America can do big things, and remind the American people - especially our children - that there's nothing beyond our capacity," President Biden remarked.

"We can see possibilities no-one has ever seen before. We can go places no-one has ever gone before."

The $10bn James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched on 25 December last year, is billed as the successor to the famous Hubble Space Telescope.

It will make all sorts of observations of the sky, but has two overarching goals. One is to take pictures of the very first stars to shine in the Universe more than 13.5 billion years ago; the other is to probe far-off planets to see if they might be habitable.

The image unveiled before President Biden showcases Webb's capabilities to pursue the first of these objectives.

What you see is a cluster of galaxies in the Southern Hemisphere constellation of Volans known by the ungainly name of SMACS 0723.

The cluster itself isn't actually that far away - "only" about 4.6 billion light-years in the distance. But the great mass of this cluster has bent and magnified the light of objects that are much, much further away.

It's a gravitational effect; the astronomical equivalent of a zoom lens for a telescope.

Webb, with its 6.5m-wide golden mirror and super-sensitive infrared instruments, has managed to detect in this picture the distorted shape (the red arcs) of galaxies that existed a mere 600 million years after the Big Bang (the Universe is 13.8 billion years old).

And it's even better than that. Scientists can tell from the quality of the data produced by Webb that the telescope is sensing space way beyond the most far-flung object in this image.

As a consequence, it's possible this is even the deepest cosmic viewing field ever obtained.

Media caption,

Amber Straughn: Why the James Webb telescope sees in the infrared

"Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. And that light that you are seeing on one of those little specks has been travelling for over 13 billion years," said Nasa administrator Bill Nelson.

"And by the way, we're going back further, because this is just the first image. They're going back about 13 and a half billion years. And since we know the Universe is 13.8 billion years old, you're going back almost to the beginning."

Hubble used to stare at the sky for weeks on end to produce this kind of result. Webb identified its super-deep objects after only 12.5 hours of observations.

Nasa and its international partners, the European and Canadian space agencies, will release further colour imagery from Webb on Tuesday.

One of the topics to be discussed will touch on that other overarching goal: the study of planets outside our Solar System.

Webb has analysed the atmosphere of WASP-96 b, a giant planet located more than 1,000 light-years from Earth. It will tell us about the chemistry of that atmosphere.

WASP-96 b orbits far too close to its parent star to sustain life. But, one day, it's hoped Webb might spy a planet that has gases in its air that are similar to those that shroud the Earth - a tantalising prospect that might hint at the presence of biology.

Nasa scientists are in no doubt that Webb will fulfil its promise.

"I have seen the first images and they are spectacular," deputy project scientist Dr Amber Straughn said of Tuesday's further release.

"They're amazing in themselves just as images. But the hints of the detailed science we're going to be able to do with them is what makes me so excited," she told BBC News.

Dr Eric Smith, the programme scientist for the Webb project, said he thought the public had already grasped the significance of the new telescope.

"The design of Webb, the way Webb looks, I think, is in large part the reason the public is really fascinated by this mission. It looks like a spaceship from the future."

James Webb telescope takes super sharp view of early cosmos - BBC News

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