US President Joe Biden released on Monday one of the first images taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that shows the galaxy cluster named, SMACS 0723, which acts as a magnifying glass for the objects behind them. Due to the gravitational lensing, the image reveals spectacular details, including the faintest objects ever observed. The galaxy cluster shown in the image appears as it was 4.6 billion years ago.
It's here–the deepest, sharpest infrared view of the universe to date: Webb's First Deep Field.
Previewed by @POTUS on July 11, it shows galaxies once invisible to us. The full set of @NASAWebb's first full-color images & data will be revealed July 12: https://t.co/63zxpNDi4I pic.twitter.com/zAr7YoFZ8C— NASA (@NASA) July 11, 2022
“This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length by someone on the ground,” NASA wrote in a release.
The image, JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera has taken images at different wavelengths of light in over 12.5 hours. Previously, the Hubble Space Telescope's took weeks to capture deepest field images.
The full gallery of high-resolution colour images taken by the JWST will be released on Tuesday, July 12 around 8 pm (IST).
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Researchers will soon be able to learn more about the galaxies’ masses, ages, histories, and the origin of the universe as JSWT will seek the earliest galaxies in the universe.
NASA has confirmed that the JWST has five initial cosmic targets for observation. These include the Carina nebula, a celestial nursery where stars form. It is about 7,600 light years away and is home to many enormous stars which are several times larger than the sun.
Other areas of focus are the WASP-96 b, a giant gaseous planet outside our solar system, the southern ring nebula, a cloud of gas surrounding a dying star, 2,000 light years from Earth, and Stephan’s quintet, which is the first compact galaxy group discovered in 1877. Images from these targets will also be released by NASA on Tuesday, July 12.
The James Webb Space Telescope had been three decades in the making. It is a joint venture of NASA with the European Space Agency which has been in development since the mid-1990s and was launched into space last year in December.
Experts believe it could revolutionise our understanding of the cosmos by providing detailed infrared images from the oldest and distant parts of the universe.
The $10bn telescope can look inside the atmospheres of exoplanets and observe some of the oldest galaxies in the universe using its system of lenses, filters, and 18 hexagonal segments of gold-coated beryllium metal to detect infrared signals.
The JWST is the most powerful telescope ever to be sent into space. It is currently about 1 million miles from Earth, scanning the oldest galaxies.
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(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)
First Published: Jul 12, 2022 1:48 PM IST
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