President Joe Biden will share the first image from the James Webb Space Telescope on Monday at the White House at 5 p.m. ET. The rest of Webb's first ...
These will be the first of many images to come from Webb, the most powerful telescope ever launched into space. "Webb can see backwards in time just after the big bang by looking for galaxies that are so far away, the light has taken many billions of years to get from those galaxies to ourselves," said Jonathan Gardner, Webb deputy senior project scientist at NASA, during a recent news conference. Webb's study of the giant gas planet WASP-96b will be the first full-color spectrum of an exoplanet. The space telescope's view of Stephan's Quintet will reveal the way galaxies interact with one another. Called gravitational lensing, this will create Webb's first deep field view of incredibly old and distant, faint galaxies. Located 7,600 light-years away, the Carina Nebula is a stellar nursery, where stars are born.
Analysis: astronomers are hoping future images will show 'cosmic dawn', the forming of the first galaxies 13.5bn years ago.
For researchers, the waves of relief are now waves of excitement: now the real work begins. Webb will do more than look back to the early stirrings of the universe. Against the odds, the observatory made it to the launch pad, reached its destination unscathed, and appears to be operating beautifully. On Tuesday, Nasa will release more images to give a flavour of what the telescope can do. Nasa’s Hubble defined our view of the heavens for the past 30 years, and now Webb, its successor, is poised to shape our understanding for many decades to come. Webb’s impressive performance comes from its remote position in space, a spot 1m miles from Earth called the second Lagrange point, or L2, its large mirror, and the extreme sensitivity of its infrared instruments.
I am a weather and climate scientist who spent 12 years of my career at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center before joining the faculty at the University of ...
These future scientists or engineers will develop the medicines, computing systems, food and water supply technologies, and unforeseen advances of the future. People will say, “Climate change is about a polar bear and is not happening in their community.” That is so far from the truth. In a previous Forbes piece, I made the case for why climate change is a national emergency given its impacts on our water supply, food productivity, public health, energy, and infrastructure. The official NASA press release writes, “NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. It is even anticipated that JWST will explore origins of life, planetary systems, and our solar system. Here’s why the James Webb Space Telescope matters to me and you.
Among the newly released images are breathtaking views of a distant galaxy group called Stephan's Quintet that was discovered in 1877.
Researchers have said that Webb could unlock mysteries from as far back as 100 million years after the Big Bang — observations that could help astronomers understand how the modern universe came to be. As such, the telescope is expected to provide first-of-its-kind infrared views of the universe, and capture some never-before-seen cosmic objects. Scientists have said the observatory, which will be able to see deeper into space and in greater detail than any telescope that has come before it, could revolutionize human understanding of the universe.
The first image showed SMACS 0723, a cluster of galaxies located 4.6 billion light years from Earth. While the cluster is itself impressive, the smaller ...
Elsewhere, JWST examined two nebulae known as the Carina Nebula and the Southern Ring Nebula. While both are formed of clouds of dust and gas, they represent different parts of a star's life. Gravity is produced by anything with mass and is able to bend the fabric of spacetime which makes up the universe. Infrared has a wavelength that is longer than visible light, allowing astronomers to see through the atmosphere of other planets and dense gas clouds. When light passes through one of these areas, it appears to bend around the object. 'This is just the first image, and we're going back further in the future to about 13.5 billion years. While led by NASA, it was also developed by the European and Canadian space agencies.
A "stellar nursery" and a "cosmic dance" are among James Webb's first batch of colour images.
Astronomers refer here to a "cosmic reef", or "cosmic cliff" - a kind of broad demarcation between dust in the bottom half, and then gas in the top half. But this treasure trove comes from only a few days of observations, and so far the telescope's only looked at a minute fraction of the sky. Key partners on the Webb project are the European and Canadian space agencies. And this was the great hope - that we would have Webb working alongside Hubble. They have different strengths and being able to compare and contrast will give scientists a new dimension to their studies. These first images from the James Webb Space Telescope are jaw-dropping. But the officials at Nasa who are in charge of the old warhorse have just submitted a five-year budget plan. Except in this Webb image, we not only see the stars - our eyes are drawn to all that gas and the dust. The Southern Ring, or "Eight-Burst" nebula, is a giant expanding sphere of gas and dust that's been lit up by a dying star in the centre. This Webb image doesn't look that different from the Hubble version at first glance, but the new telescope's infrared sensitivity will pull out different features for astronomers to study. Four of the five galaxies within the quintet are locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters. Everywhere you see a red arc-like structure - that's something - a galaxy - way off in the distance and far further back in time. It's known to astronomers as a "gravitational lens" because the mass of the cluster bends and magnifies the light of objects that are much further away.