The first images of the James Webb Space Telescope: See the stunning images, including the Carina Nebula

A new dawn of staring at deep, deep, deep The universe began.

Scientists have released the first highly-anticipated, full-colour science photos captured by James Webb Space TelescopeThe most powerful tool ever made. The huge telescope orbits about a million miles from Earth, and it is Developed for analogs in some of the oldest galaxies And stars were ever born. Looking at these things means looking back in billions of years, because it takes that long for this ancient light to reach us (or more precisely, the $10 billion Webb Telescope).

This first batch of unprecedented images includes views of Some distant galaxies, a giant stellar nursery, and gigantic cosmic clouds. It also gives unparalleled insight into a giant planet outside our solar system. (Memes aren’t bad either.)

“Web mission is open today for business,” NASA astronomer Michelle Thaler said in the image released Tuesday morning. “And this is only the beginning. The best is yet to come…”

The Webb Telescope is the successor to the legendary Hubble Space Telescope, which owns Capture unprecedented stellar views For more than three decades. But the Webb telescope, with a gold-colored mirror two and a half times larger than the Hubble telescope, has the ability to see much fainter things, and it will look through thick, previously impenetrable clouds of cosmic dust.

See five of the most anticipated satellite images of all time.

SMEX 0723

Webb spied on a group of “extremely distant” galaxies in this image. Foreground galaxies distort light and help magnify these distant objects.

Bill Nelson, Administrator of NASA, explained that the light emitted by those galaxies has been traveling for billions of years. Specifically, you’re looking at the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared about 4.6 billion years ago. But behind it are older galaxies.

“This first image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the deepest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s first deep field image, this image is brimming with detail,” NASA explained in a statement. “Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest of infrared objects observed – appear in a webview for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky roughly the size of a grain of sand that someone carries at arm’s length. On Earth.”

Exoplanet spectrum of WASP-96 b

Some of the Webb Telescope’s most amazing observations won’t come from any pretty pictures. Using instruments called a spectrometer, Webb can spy what the atmospheres of distant and alien worlds consist of. (Maybe there is a file A trillion or more exoplanets In our Milky Way alone.) Some planets, for example, may contain water, methane, and carbon dioxide, which could mean they are habitable worlds.

The first spectrum of Webb’s gases on an exoplanet comes from WASP-96 b, known as “hot Jupiter”. It is a high-temperature gas giant that orbits its star at tremendous speeds, taking just 3.4 days in one orbit.

“NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured a distinctive fingerprint of water, along with evidence of clouds and fog, in the atmosphere surrounding a hot, puffy gas giant planet orbiting a distant sun-like star,” NASA explained. “The observation, which reveals the presence of specific gas molecules based on slight dips in the brightness of the minute colors of light, is the most detailed of its kind to date, demonstrating Webb’s unprecedented ability to analyze the atmosphere hundreds of light-years away.”

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Southern Ring Nebula

The Southern Ring Nebula is a type of object called a “planetary nebula”. These are living shells of gas and dust expelled into space by a dying star. This well-known planetary nebula is about 2,000 light-years away from us.

“Some stars save the best for last,” NASA wrote. “The faint star in the center of this scene has been sending rings of gas and dust for thousands of years in all directions, and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed for the first time that this star is covered in dust.”

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

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stefan quintet

The Stephan Quintet is a well-known group of galaxies about 290 million light-years away. NASA said four of them are relatively close to each other, “locked up in a cosmic dance of frequent close encounters.”

“With its powerful infrared vision and extremely high spatial resolution, Webb displays detail never before seen in this galaxy cluster,” NASA explained. “Shimmering clusters of millions of young stars and starburst regions of new star birth adorn the picture. Sweeping tails of gas, dust and stars are pulled from many galaxies by gravitational interactions.”

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Carina Nebula

Nebulae are some of the most dazzling regions of space. They are giant clouds of dust and gas, like those that formed after a giant star explosion. It is fertile ground for the formation of new stars. Webb captured a view of the massive Carina Nebula, which is located about 7,600 light-years away and is where large stars actually formed.

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

NASA wrote: “This landscape of ‘mountains’ and ‘valleys’ filled with twinkling stars is actually the edge of a nearby and young star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula.” This image was captured in infrared light by the new James Webb Space Telescope. This image reveals for the first time previously unseen regions of star birth.” The space agency added that the highest “peaks” you see here are about seven light-years high.

deep space observatory

Webb Telescope – A Collaboration Between NASAand the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency – designed to make unprecedented discoveries. “With this telescope, it’s really hard not to break records,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, an astrophysicist and NASA associate administrator for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, recently said at a press conference.

Cleanroom engineers pose in front of the James Webb Space Telescope.
Credit: NASA/Kris Jenn

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Here’s how Webb will achieve unparalleled things:

• giant mirror: The Webb mirror, which captures the light, is more than 21 feet wide. This is two and a half times larger than Hubble Space Telescope Mirror. Capturing more light allows Webb to see more distant ancient objects. The telescope will look at stars and galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

  “We’ll see the first stars and galaxies that ever formed,” Jan Creighton, astronomer and planetarium director Manfred Olson at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, told Mashable last year.

• Infrared display: Unlike Hubble, which sees light largely visible to us, Webb is essentially an infrared telescope, which means it sees light in the infrared spectrum. This allows us to see more of the universe. Infrared longer wavelengths than visible light, so light waves glide more efficiently through cosmic clouds; Light often does not collide with these dense particles and is scattered. Eventually, Webb’s infrared sight can penetrate places that Hubble can’t.

  “She lifts the veil,” said Creighton.

• Gazing at distant exoplanets: web telescope Carry specialized equipment called spectrometers, will revolutionize our understanding of these distant worlds. Instruments can decode molecules (such as water, carbon dioxide, and methane) found in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets — whether they are gas giants or smaller, rocky worlds. Webb will search the exoplanets in the Milky Way. Who knows what we will find.

  “We may learn things we never thought possible,” says Mercedes Lopez Morales, an exoplanet researcher and astrophysicist at Center for Astrophysics – Harvard and Smithsonianfor Mashable in 2021.