What we learned from the first images from the Webb telescope

What we learned from the first images from the Webb telescope

This article is based on previous coverage by Kenneth Chang, Dennis Overbye, Joshua Sokol and Carl Zimmer.

NASA released five images of early work from the James Webb Space Telescope on Tuesday. The photos highlighted the telescope’s great potential for uncovering the secrets of deep space. Below are some of the things we’ve learned so far.

NASA’s experience with the Hubble Space Telescope return blurry images showed that sometimes advanced scientific instruments did not work as intended. Astronauts made multiple trips to the Hubble to repair it, but such repairs were not possible for the Webb, which is much further from Earth than any human has traveled.

They did so in spectacular fashion, as Jane Rigby, the operations project scientist for the telescope, explained during a news conference on Tuesday.

“I had the very emotional response of ‘Oh my god, it works,'” she said, describing the first razor-sharp test images the telescope sent home. “And it works better than we thought.”

Or as hundreds of scientists put it? a paper published online on Tuesday but had not yet been peer-reviewed: “The telescope and suite of instruments have demonstrated the sensitivity, stability, image quality and spectral range necessary to transform our understanding of the cosmos through observations stretching from near-Earth asteroids to the most distant galaxies.”

The scientific research is already underway. About 13 projects have been designated Early Release Science Programs, chosen to jump-start the Webb era. They span a range of categories and include our solar system, galaxies and intergalactic space, massive black holes and the galaxies in which they live, as well as the evolution of stars.

“The scientific results will be rolled out from now on,” said Dr. rigby.

President Biden on Monday introduced an image taken by the Webb telescope that NASA officials and astronomers hailed as one of the deepest images of the cosmos yet taken, a sign that will likely be quickly passed as more data is released from its computers. come nasa.

the image of a distant star cluster called SMACS 0723 revealed the presence of even more distant galaxies scattered across the sky. The light from those galaxies, magnified to visibility by the cluster’s gravitational field, arose more than 13 billion years ago.

Astronomers theorize that the farthest, earliest stars may be different from the stars we see today. The first stars were composed of pure hydrogen and helium left over from the Big Bang, and they could grow much more massive than the Sun — then collapse rapidly and violently into supermassive black holes of the kind that now populate the centers of most galaxies.

The spectra for the exoplanet WASP-96b. the size of Jupiter wasn’t the most impressive image shown on screens Tuesday — instead of mind-blowing cosmic cliffs, it showed slopes from a map recorded as the planet passed in front of its star 1120 light-years away. But when astronomers operating the Webb telescope at the Space Science Telescope Institute in Baltimore saw it, they gasped and applauded.

“I’m more than excited to share this with you,” said Nestor Espinoza, an astronomer there.

The planet had previously been studied from the ground and with Hubble. But the Webb telescope has also picked up traces of water vapor, nebulae and some previously invisible clouds. That surprised scientists.

“I think we’ll be able to find planets that we think are interesting — you know, good potential for life,” said Megan Mansfield, an astronomer at the University of Arizona. “But we won’t necessarily be able to identify life right away.”

The relatively small size of these exoplanets has made them extremely difficult to study until now. The Webb telescope allows astronomers to take a closer look at these worlds.

The space telescope “is the first major space observatory to include the study of the atmospheres of exoplanets in its design,” said Dr. mansfield.

There are already some goals in mind, such as: Trappist-1, a star with multiple planets in its habitability zone. “We’ll just have to wait for the time to reveal the story,” said Knicole Colón, the telescope’s deputy project scientist for exoplanet science.

But the most striking image was of the Carina Nebula, a huge, swirling cloud of dust which is both a star nursery and home to some of the most luminous and explosive stars in the galaxy. Seen in infrared, the nebula resembled a looming eroded coastal cliff, studded with hundreds of stars astronomers had never seen before.

“It took me a while to figure out what to call it in this image,” said Amber Straugn, a deputy project scientist for the telescope, pointing to a steep structure.

The image also featured structures scientists couldn’t explain, such as a weird, curved feature.

“As always, there is room for the unexpected,” said Amaya Moro-Martin, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, who presented the image to her colleagues there on Tuesday. “We have no idea what this is.”

Expect many more such discoveries from the Webb – things never seen before and that need explanation.

For a spacecraft like the James Webb Space Telescope, it was inevitable that bits of cosmic dust would hit his mirrors† Still, it was an unwelcome surprise for NASA officials to find that one of the telescope’s mirrors had been damaged by a micrometeoroid attack in late May, and the impact was bigger than expected.

NASA officials said the distortion was barely noticeable and Webb’s performance still exceeds all requirements. Engineers also adjusted the position of the damaged mirror to eliminate some of the distortion.

Before the incident was reported, four smaller micrometeoroids had already hit the telescope.

“The biggest concern we’re concerned about is just the micrometeorite environment,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science missions.

dr. Zurbuchen said NASA is evaluating flight options to increase the chances of dust hitting the telescope hitting the back, not the front of the mirrors.