On Monday, the US space agency NASA, along with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, presented the “deepest and sharpest infrared image of the universe recorded to date”. Stars and galaxies can be seen in the first image released at the White House by the James Webb Space Telescope, launched six months ago.
Biden spoke of a “historic day”, Harris of an “exciting new capital in the exploration of our universe”. The image shows only “a small part of the universe,” said NASA chief Bill Nelson. His explanation to Biden: “The light you see in one of these little blobs has been traveling for 13 billion years.” The images from the “James Webb” telescope would remind the world “that America can do great things,” Biden said. At the same time, he admitted that the idea of the telescope’s roughly 1.5 million miles flying into space “breaks my brain.”
More color images to follow
On Tuesday (4:30 p.m. CEST), NASA wanted to publish more photos taken by the telescope. The color images were selected by representatives of several space agencies involved in the project and showed the so-called Carina Nebula, a type of gas cloud, and the planet Wasp-96 b, which is outside our solar system, NASA had previously announced. The publication of the photos also marks the official start of scientific work with the largest and most powerful telescope ever launched.
NASA had already presented a kind of preview last week: part of an image with stars and galaxies was made with 72 images over a period of 32 hours. It is “one of the most in-depth recordings of the universe ever made,” it said. Basically it’s just a test image taken by a sensor that wasn’t originally going to be sent to Earth, but it shows what the telescope will be capable of.
The telescope had already sent its first test images to Earth a few months ago, including photos of a star and a selfie (image below). The still somewhat blurry images were also test images intended to prove that the camera and the telescope’s 18 mirror segments work in principle.
Telescope is an international co-production
The “James Webb Space Telescope” (JWST) was launched on December 25 aboard an Ariane launch vehicle from the European space station at Kourou in French Guiana — after there had been cost explosions and repeated shifts before. The space agencies of the US, Canada and Europe are collaborating on the project.
The development of the space observatory took about 30 years and ultimately cost about ten billion dollars (about 8.8 billion euros). It tracks the Hubble telescope, which has been in use for more than 30 years now. While “Hubble” works in the optical and ultraviolet range, “James Webb” investigates in the near infrared range.
The telescope must provide new images from the early universe, among other things, with the aid of a 25 square meter mirror (photo above). Astronomers hope, among other things, that the images made by the telescope will provide insight into the time after the Big Bang, about 13.8 billion years ago. They hope for images of stars that are older than our solar system and may no longer exist — and possibly even evidence of a second Earth. The lifespan of JWST is initially set at ten years.
Source: Krone
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
