The long-delayed $10 billion revolutionary James Webb Telescope from NASA has come out with its first color image that is unique. It provides a glimpse into space with a time machine that goes back to capture how galaxies were formed when the cosmos was still in its infancy.
The image released on Monday in a ceremony in the White House attended by NASA officials and President Joe Biden showed a cluster of galaxies known as SMACS 0723. It functions as a massive lens that magnifies them with distant and faint objects in the cosmos behind it.
More about the image
According to Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator, the images show the galaxy as it appeared 13 billion years ago. He said that if one is holding a grain of sand on the fingertip at their arm’s length that is part of the universe that one is seeing. The new image is considered a deep field observation with the James Webb telescope staring at a sky patch- the size of a sand grain. The infrared image is the sharpest and the deepest ever produced to see the distant universe. Nelson added that NASA is returning almost to the beginning as it is only the first image.
Outer space, when viewed, looks crowded and not spacious at all. However, when the Webb Telescope sees through its pinhole lens and examines the cosmic darkness, it seems bright and enigmatic objects in different colors. A handful of stars are seen in the foreground while everything else is stars in the galaxy, agglomerated and rendered as a tiny splash of light because of the immense distance involved.
Interestingly the effect of the lens has distorted the galaxies in the distant background and made them appear manipulated and stretched.
President Biden observed that the image was outstanding with the oldest documented light in the universe’s history. According to the White House, the image was of the highest resolution that the infrared universe captured ever. The Webb telescope is designed to study the electromagnetic spectrum’s infrared portion and gather light at wavelengths that were not possible with the highly welcomed Hubble Telescope.
Last Christmas, NASA and its partners, the Canadian Space Agency, and the European Space Agency launched the Webb Telescope. It orbited the sun from a million miles from the earth and closely watched its initial images during the early sequencing of observations.
NASA had earlier released the initial images during the testing phase of the telescope and had enthralled the astronomers. It described the images released on Monday and Tuesday as the first color images.
The promising James Webb Telescope
The Webb telescope promises to study planets in which distant stars orbit and look for a possible sign of habitation, such as an environment similar to earth. The astronomical community is excited and believes that revolutionary views are awaited on the universe.
The James Webb Telescope, which was conceived as a successor to the still functional Hubble Telescope, has capabilities that are out of this world.
