NASA has revealed the stunning first image collected by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The first in a series of images to be released this week, it is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date.
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President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, chair of the National Space Council, were on hand for the big reveal on Monday.
“This first image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date,” Nasa said of the image.
“Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail.
“Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time.”
Nasa went on to say that the slice of the vast universe covers a “patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.”
The agency said capturing the image was all in a day’s work for the Webb telescope as capturing it took less than a day.
The James Webb Space Telescope launched on Christmas Day in 2021.
It has spent the last seven months parked 1,000,000 miles from Earth, unfolding its sunshield, calibrating the tech onboard, and adjusting to the challenging temperatures of space.
Its aim is to uncover the hidden depths of our universe, peering at the faint light of early stars and galaxies created after the Big Bang some 250 million years.
The first images captured by the James Webb were presented on Nasa TV and on Nasa’s socials during a speech by President Biden.
Additional images are expected to be released on Tuesday at 10.30am during a joint event in Maryland with Nasa, ESA (European Space Agency), and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
“Released one by one, the first images from the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope will demonstrate Webb at its full power, ready to begin its mission to unfold the infrared universe,” Nasa said.
A few engineers got a sneak peek at the images that are going public this week.
“What I have seen moved me, as a scientist, as an engineer, and as a human being,” Nasa deputy administrator Pam Melroy said.
Some excited fans had different theories on what the James Webb has been snapping photos of.
“I know it’s fantastically and arguably, uh, a bit terrifying, but it would be incredible if the JWST could find some alien mega-structures,” one Twitter user wrote.
“Imagine they release the JWST images and there’s f***in massive aliens inside the nebulas thatd be so cool,” another user added.
The James Webb Space Telescope has been angled to take images of the Carina and Southern Ring Nebulae, a gaseous exoplanet, and a galaxy cluster.
Hank Green, an author and trusted science vlogger, told his 1.2million Twitter followers that “the promise of Webb has always been to see farther away (and thus farther back in time) than we have ever seen.”
Indeed, the images from Webb are glimpses into the past – the light from deep space has traveled to the lens of the James Webb over light-years of expanse.
The same principle applies to the Sun – light from the Sun takes a bit more than eight minutes to reach Earth.
More than 30 years ago, President George HW Bush delivered a speech touting a new chapter of space exploration that led to the launch and development of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Today, President Biden has turned the page once again to an even more promising age of space exploration and imaging.
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