NASA will publish tomorrow, July 12, one of his most anticipated announcements of the year. The first pictures taken by the space telescope James Webb In full operation. True, some of them have already been published, but they were all from his checking and adjusting devices. Tomorrow will be part of his ambitious space mission. But since we couldn’t wait any longer, United States President Joe Biden today demonstrated an act White House a little appetizer to what we’ll see on Tuesday.
According to NASA, this “the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the early universe ever taken”. This image was achieved in a full day of work by James Webb. “If you were to lift a grain of sand up to the sky at arm’s length, that tiny grain of sand would be the size of Webb’s field of view in this image. Just imagine: galaxies abound within a grain of sand, including light from galaxies that have traveled for thousands of years. “We are millions of years old,” the space agency notes.
That being said, our concern is to know what the images that James Webb will show us tomorrow will look like, albeit rightly so. At least we already know what will be seen in these pictures, but we have no idea about the details. One thing is clear: if what we saw at the White House today was an appetizer, then the main course will leave us all with our mouths open.
First Nebulae by James Webb
The purpose of the James Webb Space Telescope, a good replacement for Hubble, is to point the human eye to distant places. In addition, you can get images of objects that were photographed earlier, but with much better sharpness.
There are many missions ahead, although NASA has already provided a catalog of objects that it will focus on in this first round. There are five of them.
First, he will show us up close one of the brightest and most extensive nebulae in the sky, carina nebula. This is a well-studied subject. However, thanks to James Webb’s ability to observe in the infrared, we will be able to obtain much more detailed images of this extension, located at a distance of 7500 light years from Earth.
But this is not the only nebula that this space telescope will show us. We’ll also see images of another much closer object, 2,000 light-years away: southern ring nebula. As with the Carina Nebula, what we have seen so far has been due to Hubble. The predecessor of James Webb managed to find two stars inside, one brighter and one dimmer. The latter must have definitely lost its shell, becoming a white dwarf and throwing out the material that gave rise to the nebula. We have seen all this thanks to Hubble, but what is certainly ahead is much more impressive.
There’s time for exoplanets too
This first batch is also expected to include information about the exoplanet: OSA-96b. It should be noted that what we see will not be a photograph of it, but a spectrum that will help us better understand the composition of its atmosphere.
It is very interesting to know its composition, as it is the first discovered exoplanet without clouds.
Dance of the Galaxies Under the Mirrors by James Webb
Stephen Quintet it is one of the oldest known compact galaxy groups. It consists of five galaxies located 290 million light-years away, which interact with each other, giving rise to new structures that can be studied more deeply thanks to infrared analysis carried out by James Webb.
And, if all that wasn’t enough, Hubble’s successor will also show us something we’ve never seen before. SMAX 0723, a cluster of galaxies 4200 light-years from Earth, known for its enormous mass. In fact, it is so massive that it distorts spacetime, acting like a gravitational lens that magnifies the most distant galaxies.
This first to-do list from James Webb has a bit of everything. We have already seen a small part, now it remains only to wait a few hours. Morning, around 4:30 pm Spanish Peninsular time and 9:30 am Mexico City time., we’ll have the rest. NASA will broadcast it live, both on its video channel and on all of its social networks. It will be one of the most exciting moments in the history of space exploration.
Source: Hiper Textual