Nobody has looked that far: the James Webb Space Telescope has taken the deepest and sharpest infrared image of deep space to date. As hoped, his image is much more detailed and sharper than the “deep field” images of the non-infrared Hubble Space Telescope. The new image shows a galaxy cluster 4.6 billion light-years away, as well as the more distant background galaxies.
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Launched on December 25, 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope is the largest and most powerful telescope ever launched. With its 6.50 meter main mirror and four optical instruments optimized for the infrared range, it will see farther and more clearly into space than any telescope before it. Astronomers want to look back to the time of the first galaxies, but also observe star cradles, exoplanets and other cosmic objects in infrared light.
After a complicated in-space deployment and alignment of the mirror and solar array, and extensive testing and calibration, the James Webb telescope is now ready to begin its science mission.
US President Joe Biden presented the first image from the new telescope in person at the White House last night. It is a so-called “deep field” image – a portrait of distant galaxies created using long exposures. The Hubble Space Telescope has also created several such deep views of space. Unlike the James Webb telescope, however, Hubble does not specialize in the infrared range required for this.
The JWST First Deep Field shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, which is about 4.6 billion light away from us. The high gravity of these galaxies and the dark matter associated with them makes this cluster act like a gravitational lens for thousands of even more distant, fainter galaxies. They are now visible for the first time in this recording together with their details. The image was taken with the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the sharpest infrared eye of the telescope.
“Webb’s first deep field is not only the first full-color image from the James Webb Space Telescope, it is also the sharpest and deepest infrared image of the distant Universe to date,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “This shot covers an area of sky the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length. It is a first tiny slice of the vast universe.”
Astronomers are also enthusiastic about this first image from the James Web Telescope: “To see such sensitivity and resolution in the infrared wavelength range is really groundbreaking and opens up a wealth of new possibilities,” comments Aayush Saxena from University College London. “These capabilities will make it possible to detect the first galaxies formed in the universe. Overall, this was a wonderful preview of the revolutionary achievements of the James Webb Space Telescope.”
In order to make the extremely faint galaxies visible, the telescope focused on this part of the sky for a total of 12.5 hours. The NIRCam used for this works in the near-infrared wavelength range of 0.5 to 0.6 micrometers and always targets two adjacent parts of the sky at the same time. It contains ten mercury-cadmium-tellurium detectors that work like a CCD in standard digital cameras.
“This is just a first glimpse of what Webb can do,” said Macarena Garcia Marin of the European Space Agency ESA to come in the years to come.” Tonight, NASA will release additional first images from the space telescope.
Those: NASA, ESA
This article was written by Nadja Podbregar
The original for this article “Infrared view into space: New telescope images show galaxies like never before” comes from scinexx.
