President Joe Biden unveiled the first full-color image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on Monday, an image that borders on the line between science and science-fiction as it is one of the deepest and highest-resolution views of the universe ever captured. NASA followed this up on Tuesday with more mind-boggling photos from the great expanse of outer space.
The “deep field” image gleans a look at a point in space 4.6 billion light-years away from Earth. This means that the light captured by the telescope was emitted from these distant objects before the formation of the Earth.
The magnificent photo of new worlds is of SMACS 0723, a cluster of distant galaxies that distorts the light around it to reveal even more distant worlds. Gravity is a powerful force, and with supermassive objects in space, gravity can actually bend light.
This phenomenon is also known as gravitational lensing and can reveal objects that otherwise would be too faint to be seen. The light distortion in the SMACS 0723 galaxy cluster combined with the tremendous power of the JWST can reveal ancient objects, potentially nearly as old as the universe itself.
“These images are going to remind the world that America can do big things, and a reminder to the American people, especially our children, that there’s nothing beyond our capacity,” President Biden stated at Monday’s event revealing the first photo from the telescope. “We can see possibilities nobody has ever seen before, go places nobody has ever gone before.”
The JWST was launched on Dec. 25, 2021, and is stationed about 1 million miles away from Earth at a Lagrange point (L2). At this location, roughly three times farther away than the moon, the gravitational forces from the sun and Earth naturally work to keep the telescope around the same point in space without having to use much fuel, according to NASA.
At this distance, it is virtually impossible for astronauts to service the telescope if something goes wrong, but it is in a darker area of space compared to the Hubble Space Telescope, which is around 340 miles away from the Earth.
It is also significantly more powerful than the famed Hubble Space Telescope, allowing scientists to look deeper into space and potentially unlock secrets about the formation of planets, the birth of stars or perhaps even the origins of the universe. “Webb will revolutionize our knowledge of star formation & gas interactions in these galaxies,” NASA said.
NASA, in partnership with the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency, revealed several photos in recent weeks captured during the telescope’s calibration, and even these test images blew away expectations.
Scientists say that the data and images collected by the telescope over its lifetime could revolutionize the understanding of the history of the universe.
To see more images from NASA’s James Webb Telescope, click here.
—
Photo Credit: Dima Zel / Shutterstock.com