Gaze Into the Deepest View Yet of Our Universe: Webb’s First Full-Color Image Is Here

In a information convention Monday night, NASA officers, President Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris revealed the primary full-color picture from the Webb Space Telescope: a panoramic shot of deep area stretching again over 13 billion years, the primary in a set of photos to be launched this week of the telescope’s first cosmic targets.

The picture depicts SMACS 0723, a galactic cluster that magnifies deeper area behind it from Earth’s perspective, making it attainable to see among the earliest mild of the universe.

“America’s defined by one single word: possibilities,” Biden mentioned in his press briefing held on the White House.

In a press release today, NASA confirmed that Webb is totally prepared for science; all 17 methods of working the telescope’s devices are in working order and the spacecraft is totally commissioned. That announcement is being celebrated with the discharge of Webb’s first full-color photos.

“100 years ago Mr. President, Madame Vice President, we thought there was only one galaxy,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson mentioned within the convention. “Now, the number is unlimited.”

The Webb crew will launch the remainder of the pictures and spectra from the telescope’s different latest targets tomorrow. Those cosmic targets embody the Carina and Southern Ring nebulae, the gassy exoplanet WASP-96b, and 5 galaxies clustered collectively about 290 million light-years away often called Stephan’s Quintet. At 1,150 light-years from Earth, the exoplanet WASP-96b is the closest goal imaged in Webb’s latest agenda. The deep area (as you may think) captures probably the most distant objects.

The deep area picture is especially intriguing as a result of the Webb crew capitalized on a quirk of spacetime to make it occur. Webb checked out a galaxy cluster referred to as SMACS 0723, which magnifies the sunshine behind it (from the place of Webb.) The Webb crew successfully skilled probably the most cutting-edge area telescope on a goal magnified by the gravitational distortions of SMACS 0723 to see mild from the early universe.

Though it might appear odd to some that Biden unveiled this primary picture, there’s an extended history of presidents participating in aerospatial and astronomical occasions. President Kennedy famously introduced the intention to ship Americans to the Moon in 1963; Vice President Mike Pence did the identical in 2019. As a few of our readers speculated this morning, a president revealing the Webb picture—or any area information, for that matter—might imply that extra individuals take note of it.

The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a few deep fields, however Webb will be capable to see farther and in sharper element. Webb solely takes in mild on the infrared and near-infrared wavelengths—which is able to enable it to see extra historic, redshifted mild than Hubble, which principally takes in ultraviolet and visual mild.

Webb is not replacing Hubble (which has been in operation for over 30 years!) however is succeeding it. Webb can be a lot farther from Earth than Hubble, sitting about 1 million miles from us at an remark level referred to as L2.

The picture you see on this article and people revealed tomorrow all have to be translated into seen mild, with numerous infrared wavelengths assigned to completely different colours.

“[The] imaging community in astrophotography like to refer to this process as ‘representative color,’ instead of what it used to be called, [and] still many people call ‘false color images,’” Joe DePasquale, a senior information picture developer on the Space Telescope Science Institute recently told NASA’s Gravity Assist speak present.

“I dislike the term ‘false color,’ because it has this connotation that we’re faking it, or it’s, you know, this isn’t really what it looks like. The data is the data. That’s exactly what it looks like,” DePasquale added.

So, what it appears like: spell-binding, eye-opening—or maybe simply an unusual area picture, by your measure. But that is the start of what hopefully will probably be an extended profession for the telescope, one that may divulge to us complete new views of the universe.

Tune in tomorrow for the remainder of Webb’s first photos; they are going to be launched starting at 10:30 a.m. ET here.

More: First Webb Images Will Include Exoplanet Data and the Deepest-Ever Image of the Universe