It is a long-awaited day in astronomy circles and beyond. On Monday we will get the deepest view of the cosmos ever captured, thanks to the extraordinary capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
The first image from the $10 billion telescope will show the farthest humanity has ever seen in time and distance, closer to the dawn of the universe and the edge of the cosmos.
The President of the United States, Joe Biden, reveal the first image around 5 p.m. ET, followed by four more shots of galactic beauty on Tuesday.
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James Webb Telescope Sends Back More Amazing Photos of a Distant Galaxy
NASA said Biden will show a “deep field” image. That shot is likely to be filled with lots of stars—”lots” is an understatement—with massive foreground galaxies distorting the light of objects behind, magnifying them, and making faint, extremely distant galaxies visible. Part of the image will consist of light from not long after the Big Bang.
the images to be published on tuesday They include a view of a giant gas planet outside our solar system, two images of a nebula where stars are born and die in spectacular beauty, and an update on a classic image of five tightly packed galaxies dancing around one another.
JWST is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, which has not only provided amazing images, but has also been vital in providing scientific knowledge about our universe and its origins.
A high-definition photo of the “Pillars of Creation” taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA, ESA, STScI and J. Hester and P. Scowen (Arizona State University)/Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
JWST has a much larger primary mirror than Hubble (2.7 times larger in diameter, or about six times larger in area), giving it more light-gathering power and much better sensitivity than Hubble. Hubble.
The JWST launched and there were no second chances: its extremely distant location in the solar system makes it impossible for human crews to work on it.
Engineering teams celebrate at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore as the second main mirror wing of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is unfurled, before beginning the process of putting the mirror wing in place, Saturday. January 8, 2022.
Bill Ingalls/NASA via The Associated Press
But the telescope’s massive sunshield, with its 107 restraints holding it in place, released just fine and everything went according to plan.
So far, we’ve seen little glimpses of the JWST’s optical brilliance.
In May, the telescope issued a series of test images showing stunning images of a neighboring satellite galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. When compared to previous images captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope, the results are astounding.
The sharpness and level of detail captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope (left) and the James Webb Space Telescope (right).
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
“It’s not until you actually see the kind of image it provides that you really internalize it and go ‘wow,'” Marcia Rieke of the University of Arizona, chief scientist for Webb’s near-infrared camera, said at the time. “Just think about what we are going to learn.”
And in March, the telescope delivered a spectacular photo of the star to NASA, passing its first assignment with flying colors.
The telescope’s alignment assessment image, which focuses on a star called 2MASS J17554042+6551277, made researchers’ hair fly.
Galaxies and stars can be seen behind the star 2MASS J17554042+6551277 in this image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.
Courtesy / NASA
“We said last fall that we would know the telescope is working properly when we have an image of a star that looks like a star,” Lee Feinberg, element manager for the Webb Optical Telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said. he told Cosmos magazine at the time.
“The performance is as good, if not better, than our most optimistic prediction.”
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‘Absolutely phenomenal’: First Webb Telescope images have scientists giddy
Scientists believe the telescope will be able to go back in time, possibly up to 100 million years after the Big Bang. And scientists not only think they can look back at galaxies from that time, they also think they could determine the composition of those galaxies.
In this 2017 photo provided by NASA, technicians lift the mirror assembly of the James Webb Space Telescope with a crane.
Desiree Stover/NASA
Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA’s science mission, said that with the new telescope, the cosmos is “revealing secrets that have been there for many, many decades, centuries, millennia.”
“It is not an image. What you are going to see is a new vision of the world,” she said during a recent press conference.
Zurbuchen said that when he saw the images he was moved as were his colleagues.
“It’s really hard not to look at the universe in a new light and not have a deeply personal moment.”
NASA is collaborating on Webb with the European and Canadian space agencies.
— With files from The Associated Press
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