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In a few hours (today, 12 July at 16:30, Italian time) we will see the new images and the initial scientific data captured by the James Webb space telescope over the past few weeks. This is just the beginning of the scientific observation campaign that could last up to 20 years or more (if systems are found to supply it 1.5 million km from Earth).
Although the biggest anticipation is for the event to be held this afternoon (and we already know what the objectives will be), NASA, ESA and CSA wanted to give a taste of the potential of the scientific instrument thanks to the US president Joe Biden (and space agency administrator Bill Nelson). The latter showed live the very first processed image captured by the JWST which has deep space as its subject. A way to hold up “the hype” and try to reach an audience that is usually not interested in this kind of news.
President Biden shows the first image of the James Webb Space Telescope
Although the event was scheduled for 11 July (Italian time), all fans had to wait over an hour before being able to see what the NASA he wanted to show how “teaser” of the JWST to the big event in the afternoon. Between memes and jokes on the repetitive music of the streaming NASA TV official finally, when it was already past midnight, the broadcast began.
After the introduction of the vice president Harris it was the turn of the president Biden take the floor (thanking his “friend” Nelson) and recalled the role of the United States in this kind of operation. The NASA administrator introduced the deep field image taken by the James Webb space telescope remembering that the galaxies shown are very far in space and time but that above all this is just a taste of what it will be able to do JWST.
Click on the image to enlarge to the maximum resolution (5 MB)
This image is not a photograph “record-breaking” regarding the age of the Universe. There are missions like COBE and WMAP that came when the Big Bang had been happening for about 380,000 years and that we now see as background radiation (with stars and galaxies that were not yet formed). The James Webb space telescope instead it captures infrared at different wavelengths, thus being able to push it up to a few hundred million years after the Big Bang but allowing to observe primordial galaxies.
But to understand when field of view is included in this image of SMACS 0723 you have to think about holding a grain of sand facing the sky at an arm’s length. That grain of sand is what you can see in this image where thousands of galaxies, billions of light years away (4.6 billion light years, to be precise), are enclosed.
In the image you can also see the shape given to the light points (stars) due to the segments of the main mirror of the JWST (as well as partially to the secondary mirror support). In addition, the gravitational distortion of some galaxies can be noted. The image was captured thanks to NIRCam and is composed of images at different wavelengths with an overall exposure of 12.5 hours. Now all that remains is to wait until 16:30 to see much more!
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