The Webb Telescope has added to this miraculous principle ever since. Now it’s brought us something a little closer to home, just 615 meters away: the most amazingly detailed images of Jupiter we’ve ever seen. The James Webb Space Telescope is packed for shipment to its launch site in Kourou, French Guiana. Photo: Chris Gunn/Nasa/Reuters Oxford University astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst, author of a forthcoming book, A Brief History of Black Holes, said there were many reasons to be skeptical it would ever get that far. “There were 344 individual points of failure where if one tiny thing had gone wrong, the entire mission would have been aborted. It was stressful months,” he said. A major source of uncertainty after the satellite was launched was how close it would approach its intended orbit – with any inaccuracy bringing with it the need to burn precious fuel. “But it was perfect. We were promised five years of data and instead we’re getting 20. It’s just unbelievable.” Here are some of the images this perfectly steered telescope has produced – and what they show about how it works and the universe itself.
Webb’s first deep field
Webb’s First Deep Field, showing a galaxy cluster called SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. Photo: ESA/PA The first of the Webb images to be revealed – by Joe Biden – shows a galaxy cluster known as SMACS 0723. The entire image covers thousands of galaxies in an area of the sky equivalent to a grain of rice held at arm’s length on Earth’s surface . “We can see things in this tiny, tiny patch in much more detail than we ever could with Hubble [the most powerful telescope until now]Smethurst said. “It suggests that there is no more empty sky – everywhere you look, you’ll find something in the background.” Like all images produced by Webb, what you can see here is not visible light – but signals in the infrared spectrum captured by the satellite in monochrome, sent back to Earth as ones and zeros, and then reconstructed. The different colors do not denote literal hues, but the wavelengths of the signals, which tell us how hot the source was. Colorizing images in this way makes it easier for scientists to pinpoint areas for further study (and generates more public excitement than a black-and-white image ever could). In this image, the sharp, twinkling star in the center is in our own galaxy. The fuzzy white dots below it are entire galaxies in the SMACS 0723 cluster, seen as they were 4.6 billion years ago. Even better, this cluster at the center acts as a kind of magnifying glass for other galaxies much further away – as much as 13 billion light-years away, almost back to the dawn of the universe. Because they are distorted in the process, they appear as arcs crossing streaks in the image: red objects are accreting cosmic dust – a critical component of star formation – while green ones are full of hydrocarbons.
The Carina Nebula
A comparison of the James Webb Telescope views of the Carina Nebula with the Hubble counterpart. Photo: NASA Comparing this image of a nebula – a huge cloud of dust and gas filled with stars – to the corresponding region captured by Hubble is a testament to how much more powerful Webb is. “The Carina Nebula is in our own galaxy,” Smethurst said. “Although I think it’s a bit like the Lake District here. The value of this image really lies in what it shows us about the benefit of looking at relatively close things in infrared. “It allows you to see through the dust – those tiny molecules of heavier elements like oxygen and carbon that scatter visible light so you can’t see the stars that have formed. In this image, we step through that dust into the 3D structure of the nebula.”
Stephan’s Quintet
The first image from NASA’s James Webb Telescope of the Stephan Quintet. Photo: NASA/PA This image, constructed from more than 150 meters of pixels sent by Webb, shows a group of galaxies in the constellation Pegasus and provides scientists with the means to see how their interactions trigger star formation. “This is my favorite because it relates directly to my work,” Smethurst said. “It shows four interacting galaxies, one of them with an accreting black hole and one that isn’t. What’s amazing is that if you zoom in, you can see individual stars: until now we’ve only been able to do that with our nearest galaxy, Andromeda, and they’re much further away.” Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The galaxy on the left of the formation is closer than the others – 40m light-years away as opposed to 290m. The top vortex in the image contains a black hole 24 meters larger than the mass of the Sun. “It’s an incredibly bright light source,” Smethurst said. “What this shows is the gas swirling around the black hole illuminated in all its glory.”
WASP-96b (spectrum)
A transmission spectrum taken from a single observation using Webb’s Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) reveals the atmospheric characteristics of the hot gas giant exoplanet WASP-96 b. Photo: NASA/UPI/Rex/Shutterstock That’s not a picture, but “it’s still extremely exciting for astrophysicists,” says Smethurst. The data set clearly reveals that this planet, 1,150 light-years away, has the distinct characteristics of water. Webb measured the light coming from the WASP-96 system as the planet moved past the star – and the way the gas giant “stolen some of the starlight” as it passes through its atmosphere reveals the unique water signature, Smethurst said. The findings are also important because they show “what the telescope is capable of,” Smethurst said. “This is a large bright planet, very close to its star. It is easier to observe light passing through the atmosphere because it often passes in front of the star. Because it’s so easy here, it suggests that with the harder ones that are further away and pass in front of their star less often like Earth, you won’t be wasting your time. It’s this idea of finding ‘Earth’s twin’ – something that looks incredibly habitable for life as we know it.”
Zeus
A new color-enhanced image of Jupiter from space shows the planet’s features in detail. Photo: Nasa/Zuma Press Wire Service/Rex/Shutterstock If Webb’s primary purpose is to tell us more about the light sent from distant stars billions of years ago, it turns out it can also produce stunning images of our solar system unlike any we’ve seen before. “I was amazed to see the level of detail here – I thought it would have washed out because it’s so bright,” Smethurst said. “But it’s very clever how they’ve used different wavelengths to capture different things.” The red haze at the planet’s north and south poles are auroras – created by the interaction of particles from the sun with the planet’s magnetic field. The famous Great Red Spot, a storm so big it could swallow Earth, appears white because it reflects so much sunlight. “And the darker regions reveal areas where light has penetrated further into the atmosphere,” Smethurst said. While Webb’s observations will be valuable to scientists, images like this are also important to Smethurst for their sheer, universal beauty. “Everyone is curious about the world we live in,” he said.
