She’s finally here : after years of waiting, the first image captured by the James Webb telescope was unveiled Monday, July 11 to the eyes of the world. The sumptuous shot shows galaxies formed shortly after the Big Bang, more than 13 billion years ago.
Sneak a peek at the deepest & sharpest infrared image of the early universe ever taken—all in a day’s work for the Webb telescope. (Literally, capturing it took less than a day!) This is Webb’s first image released as we begin to #UnfoldTheUniverse: https://t.co/tlougFWg8B pic.twitter.com/Y7ebmQwT7j
—NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) July 11, 2022
An engineering gem worth 10 billion dollars (9.98 billion euros), one of James Webb’s main missions is to explore the early ages of the universe. In astronomy, seeing far is equivalent to going back in time, the observed light having traveled for billions of years before reaching us.
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The image, which is teeming with detail, shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, at the heart of which some structures “have never been seen before”, according to NASA. It took 12.5 hours of observation for the telescope to take this shot.
This first image of James Webb marks a day “historical”, greeted President Joe Biden, six months after the launch into orbit of this space telescope, the most powerful ever designed. This photograph is “the deepest and clearest infrared image ever taken of the distant universe so far”welcomed NASA.
Although the names of James Webb’s first five cosmic targets were announced last week, the images had so far been jealously guarded in order to create suspense.
More photos are to be revealed at a NASA online event on Tuesday morning. the goal : to impress the general public with their beauty, but also to demonstrate to astronomers around the world the full power of the four on-board scientific instruments.
Two photos of nebulae – very photogenic and gigantic clouds of gas and dust where stars form – are on the program for Tuesday : the Carina Nebula and the Southern Ring Nebula. Another target, Stephan’s Quintet, a group of galaxies interacting with each other.