Astronomers and space fans have been waiting for this moment for years: The James Webb Space Telescope team has finally made public a handful of stunning images, a tantalizing teaser of things to come.
NASA’s latest flagship space telescope, co-developed with the European and Canadian space agencies, follows in the footsteps of Hubble† spitzerand Chandra† The first set of spectacular images of nebulae and distant galaxies, as well as a spectrum of an exoplanet’s atmosphere, show what the telescope can really do.
Even the Biden administration joined in the excitement, praising the Webb team and release one image on Monday, one day early. “This telescope is one of mankind’s greatest engineering achievements, and the images we will see today are a testament to the amazing work done by the thousands of workers in our country who have devoted years to this project,” he said. Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House briefing.
“It’s a new window into the history of our universe, and today we will glimpse the first light that shines through that window,” President Joe Biden said at the same event. He then presented an image of a galaxy cluster in vivid detail, a cosmic structure so massive it bends light and acts as a lens to examine even more distant objects of the early Universe.
“This image is remarkable for the number of galaxies you see, and it’s not the deepest Webb is capable of, so we’ll see more. These are definitely the hors d’oeuvres, and the main course will appear in the months and years to come,” said Jonathan Lunine, a Cornell University astrobiologist on the JWST team.
The mission didn’t start easily: The nearly $10 billion project exceeded its budget and was delayed for many years. And the telescope’s name is still a source of criticism; its namesake, James Webb, supposedly enforced homophobic policy while leading NASA in the 1960s. (Many astronomers prefer to refer to the telescope by the acronym JWST.)
After the JWST launched last Christmas, scientists put it into position and began about six months of detailed work, setting up and testing the telescope’s instruments, including sensitive near- and mid-infrared cameras, as well as spectrographs, which scatter the measured light into its component wavelengths. Now this work is paying off, as beautiful images come in that allow astronomers to begin their scientific analysis.
The new images give a taste of what scientists can achieve with the powerful telescope. Research programs will use these images to measure the expansion rate of the universe, study the first galaxies and investigate what exoplanets consist of. As science programs unfold in the coming months, a library of images will begin to accumulate on NASA’s JWST public website, Lunine says.
Here are the five images NASA released Tuesday morning.
A huge cluster of galaxies
Photo: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
This image of the galaxy cluster known as SMACS 0723 reveals thousands of galaxies in the distant Universe, in a region of the sky now called Webb’s First Deep Field. The image was taken with JWST’s near-infrared camera, NIRCam, which shows the cluster as it looked some 4.6 billion years ago. It acts like a gravitational lens, bending light and bringing fainter and even more distant objects into focus.
A spectrum of a giant exoplanet
Illustration: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
JWST also comes with a spectrograph that can examine the contents of the atmospheres of planets. WASP-96 is a gas giant about half the size of Jupiter and located about 1150 light-years away. It orbits its star every 3.4 days. JWST can infer the presence of clouds and nebulae around the planet.
The Nebula of a Dying Star
Photo: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
This image shows the spectacular Southern Ring Nebula in the near- and mid-infrared wavelengths: a dying star expelling waves of gas and dust clouds that could later become the material for new stars. Many of Hubble’s now iconic images were also of nebulae, such as the Crab Nebula and Horsehead Nebula.
A compact group of galaxies
Photo: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
This image of a narrow grouping of five galaxies known as Stephan’s Quintet shows in detail the first compact galaxy group ever discovered. Such closely spaced galaxies are locked in a cosmic dance, often brushing against each other, twisting and pulling apart, as can be seen by spiral galaxies with elongated arms.
A nebula of young stars
Photo: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
This image shows part of the Carina Nebula, one of the largest and brightest nebulae, full of young and massive stars that swallow gas and dust as they grow. JWST’s sensitive cameras reveal hundreds of newborn stars in the nebula that had never been seen before, as well as galaxies lurking in the background.