A first-of-its-kind infrared image taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Monday gave humanity a breathtaking new perspective on the universe. It depicts galaxies and stars as they were 13 billion years ago.
Alongside Vice President Kamala Harris and NASA representatives, President Joe Biden unveiled the brand-new picture on Monday at the White House. It is the first full-color image from the $10 billion telescope launched into space last year and the highest-resolution infrared image of the cosmos ever taken.
"Webb's First Deep Field" displays a kaleidoscope of galaxies against the darkness of space, with some looking like bright spots and others as "bent" and streaky, twisted by gravity on their lengthy journey to Earth.
It's a picture that gives people a new understanding of the universe's mind-boggling vastness.
"If you held a grain of sand on the tip of your finger at arm's length, that is the part of the universe that you're seeing," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson per NBC News. "Just one little speck of the universe," Nelson added.
A woman stands near a model of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland on April 2, 2015.
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The picture showed the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, four billion light-years away, that may be seen from the Southern Hemisphere on Earth. Hubble and other telescopes frequently search for it and astronomers use it as a sort of cosmic telescope. The massive gravitational field of the cluster works as a lens, amplifying and bending light from galaxies behind it that would otherwise be too dim and distant to observe.
The image offers the most comprehensive look into the early history of the universe, according to Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for space research.
Marcia Rieke of the University of Arizona, who oversaw the construction of NIRCam, one of the cameras on the Webb telescope that took the picture, said the image "will not hold the 'deepest' record for long." Instead, it "clearly shows the power of this telescope."
Biden, NASA, and its team were all thrilled to reveal the first deep field image from James Webb, but it believes that it is not the last there is to the spacecraft. NASA believes that the James Webb is for greater things and discovery, and while this moment already acts as one of its most significant, it would not stop here for surveying the skies.
Remaining Images to be Released Soon
NASA will provide additional images through a live video feed that can be viewed on NASA TV or YouTube on Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time. They will be displayed at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The space agency released Webb's first cosmic targets as a taster for what else is to come, CNN noted. The Carina Nebula, WASP-96b, the Southern Ring Nebula, and Stephan's Quintet will all be included in the photographic release on Tuesday.
The Carina Nebula, 7,600 light-years away, is a stellar nursery where stars are formed. One of the biggest and brightest nebulae in the sky, it contains several stars that are many times as massive as the sun.
The first full-color spectrum of an exoplanet will be produced by Webb's investigation of the massive gas planet WASP-96b. The spectrum contains a variety of light wavelengths that may disclose new facts about the planet, including whether or not it has an atmosphere.
WASP-96b, found in 2014, is situated 1,150 light-years away from our planet. Every 3.4 days, it completes one circle around its star and weighs half as much as Jupiter.
The "Eight-Burst," commonly known as the Southern Ring Nebula, is 2,000 light-years from the Earth. There is an expanding gas cloud surrounding a dead star in this enormous planetary nebula.
The image of Stephan's Quintet from the space telescope will show how galaxies interact. The compact galaxy group is 290 million light-years distant in the constellation Pegasus and was originally identified in 1787.
According to a NASA release, four of the group's five galaxies "are locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters," An international group of representatives from NASA, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency, and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore chose the targets.
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