As far as NASA's Hubble Space Telescope can see, 20 years ago, it captured nearly 10,000 galaxies in its deepest visible-light image of the cosmos. Known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, the galaxy-studded view represents only a sample of the universe across billions of light-years away.
The James Webb space telescope's (JWST) project to map the earliest structures of the universe has captured 15,000 more galaxies in its first snapshot.
James Webb Space Telescope Eclipsed Hubble's Previous Record After Capturing 25,000 Galaxies in a Single Image
JWST's Triumph in Capturing 25,000 Galaxies
The James Webb Space Telescope has once again proven to be such a sophisticated instrument that it makes Hubble's most Heroic efforts appear virtually mundane, per Futurism.
Before Webb became operational in July 2022, experts from NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency stated it would penetrate further into space than humanity had ever seen. Seeing beyond translates into observing the past in astronomy because light and other kinds of radiation take longer to reach us.
Astronomers are now revealing some of the first photographs from James Webb's greatest survey to date: the COSMOS-Web, which is expected to surpass the Hubble Ultra Deep Field scope with 25,000 galaxies in its first stage.
🚨 Huzzah! First images from @NASAWebb’s largest year-1 program (COSMOS-Web) show dazzling spiral galaxies, gravitational lenses and galaxy mergers. https://t.co/OyojS02ayY @astrocaits @UTAstronomy @UTAustin pic.twitter.com/sgnjhafMgp
— NaturalSciences @ UT (@TexasScience) March 9, 2023
The deep field image is similar to digging a core sample into the Earth with its tiny yet distant perspective of the universe, exposing layers of history by cutting through billions of light-years.
Mashable previously reported that the oldest observable galaxies in Hubble's deep field stretch back to the first 800 million years after the Great Bang. It is a very young period compared to the universe's estimated 13.8 billion years.
Astronomer Caitlin Casey, the co-principal investigator from the University of Texas at Austin, said in a press release that it is one of the largest JWST images taken so far, but it is still just 4% of the data scientists have gotten from the survey. Casey added that the deep field would be vast and overwhelmingly beautiful when finished.
A plethora of unusual galaxies is already visible in the first image, including spiral galaxies, merging galaxies, and the gravity of galaxies generating cosmic lenses, magnifying older galaxies even more behind them.
Importance of Deep Field Surveys
NASA said that the COSMOS-Web focuses only on a small part of the sky like other deep field surveys before it. Using the telescope's Near-Infrared Camera, the image is equivalent to only about 0.6 square degrees or just three full moons.
The space agency noted that the Mid-infrared instrument scans an additional 0.2 square degrees to that to capture a larger area. As Futurism reported, this will help scientists deepen their understanding of the Reionization Era between 400,00 to 1 billion years after the Big Bang.
Scientists are most interested in primeval galaxies and the mechanisms behind dark matter or the unobservable substance in the universe that puts galaxies together.
NASA reiterates that this is just the first stage of the survey, and they expect 200 international scientists will be collaborating to survey up to one million galaxies in 255 hours of observations. Although it might sound ambitious, these scientists are off to a good start as JWST is so effortlessly detailed.
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