The dawn of a new era in astronomy has begun as the world gets its first look at the full capabilities of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The telescope’s first full-colour images and spectroscopic data, which uncover a spectacular collection of cosmic features that have remained elusive until now, were released today.
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The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveals emerging stellar nurseries and individual stars in the Carina Nebula that were previously obscured. The new images showcase how Webb’s cameras can peer through cosmic dust, shedding new light on how stars form. Objects in earliest, rapid phases of star formation are difficult to capture, but Webb’s extreme sensitivity, spatial resolution, and imaging capability can chronicle these elusive events.
In this enormous new image, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveals never-before-seen details of galaxy group “Stephan’s Quintet”. Close proximity of the system gives astronomers a ringside seat to galactic mergers and interactions. Webb’s new image also shows in rare detail how interacting galaxies trigger star formation in each other and how gas in galaxies is being disturbed and the outflows driven by a black hole in Stephan’s Quintet in a level of detail never seen before. Tight galaxy groups like this may have been more common in the early Universe when superheated, infalling material may have fueled very energetic black holes.
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has revealed details of the Southern Ring planetary nebula that were previously hidden from astronomers. Planetary nebulae are the shells of gas and dust ejected from dying stars. Webb’s powerful infrared view brings this nebula’s second star into full view, along with exceptional structures created as the stars shape the gas and dust around them. New details like these, from the late stages of a star’s life, will help us better understand how stars evolve and transform their environments. These images also reveal a cache of distant galaxies in the background. Most of the multi-coloured points of light seen here are galaxies — not stars.
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has delivered the deepest, sharpest infrared image of the distant universe so far. Webb’s image is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length – and reveals thousands of galaxies in a tiny sliver of vast Universe. This sharp near-infrared view has brought out faint structures in extremely distant galaxies, for an unprecedented look at galaxies billions of years in the past. For the first time, Webb has also detailed chemical makeup of galaxies in the very early Universe.
With help from a cryocooler, Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument has dropped down to just a few degrees above the lowest temperature matter can reach and is ready for calibration.
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, at 13:20 CET on 25 December on its exciting mission to unlock the secrets of the Universe.
