The “deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe so far has been revealed.”
The photograph was made public by NASA and is the first taken by the world’s most advanced telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
“We look back more than 13 billion years … and we go further … this is just the first image and since we know the universe is 13.8 billion years old, we will go back almost to the beginning,” he said. NASA administrator Bill Nelson.
“It will be so accurate that you will see if the planets are habitable or not. And when you look at something as big as this, we will be able to answer questions that we don’t even know what the questions are. They still are.”
The image released tonight shows a cluster of galaxies called SMACS 0723 and is the first of several to be unveiled over the next few days.
It is the farthest humanity has ever seen in both time and distance, closer to the dawn of time and the edge of the universe, with part of the image showing light shortly after the Big Bang.
JWST isn’t just an upgrade to the 32-year-old Hubble Space Telescope. It’s a whole new way of looking at the universe.
The telescope’s light-picking capability, the best measure of its power to “see” things, is more than double that of Hubble. In addition, the $ 10 billion machine is designed to see objects with infrared light.
Although invisible to the human eye, infrared is the color of the oldest and weakest objects in the universe.
Scientists and engineers from three space agencies, NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, worked for 20 years to complete the telescope.
Along the way, several moves were made to cancel the mission as the costs and deadlines were exceeded.
The first big challenge for JWST designers was getting a telescope bigger than two double-decker buses together in space in the first place.
This required Webb to fold over itself, in the origami style. Its large 6.5 m polished gold mirror was even made, so it was folded into three segments.
To the surprise of even some of those who built it, JWST unpacked perfectly once safely in orbit in January, with each segment of its mirror now perfectly aligned.
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1:09 Launch of the world’s most powerful telescope
The next challenge was to make sure Webb was cold enough to “see” infrared light: any warm object produces it.
Even though space is cold, a view of the sun’s rays or the scattered residual heat from its own systems would blind the infrared view of the telescope like the headlights of a car approaching at night.
JWST instruments cool to -267 degrees Celsius. To protect it from the Sun, the telescope revolves around the Earth on the other side of the Moon, hidden in its shadow.
Their instruments are also protected from scattered heat and by means of five layers of parasol the size of a tennis court that were also deployed once the telescope was in orbit.
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While it is scientifically important in its own right, today’s image and those that will follow tomorrow are very much a first sight.
They were chosen to show the capabilities of JWST to a whole generation of scientists who will use the observatory in orbit, and also to the public that paid for it.
Many advances in astronomy and astrophysics occur after multiple observations of distant objects over months or years.
This is especially true when studying distant worlds in other solar systems. But can we really expect a 13.8 billion-year-old universe to leave its secrets quickly?