The rest of the high-resolution color images will make their debut as planned on Tuesday, July 12, one of which “is the deepest image of our universe that has ever been taken,” according to Nelson.
The first image release will highlight Webb’s science capabilities as well as the ability of its massive golden mirror and science instruments to produce spectacular images.
Opening remarks by NASA leadership and the Webb team will begin Tuesday at 9:45 a.m. ET, followed by an image release broadcast that kicks off at 10:30 a.m. ET. Images will be revealed one by one, and a news conference at 12:30 p.m. ET will offer details about them.
The first images
NASA shared Webb’s first five cosmic targets on Friday, providing a teaser for what the image release will include: the Carina Nebula, WASP-96b, the Southern Ring Nebula, Stephan’s Quintet and SMACS 0723.
Located 7,600 light-years away, the Carina Nebula is a stellar nursery, where stars are born. It is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky and home to many stars much more massive than our sun.
Webb’s study of the giant gas planet WASP-96b will be the first full-color spectrum of an exoplanet. The spectrum will include different wavelengths of light that could reveal new information about the planet, such as whether it has an atmosphere. Discovered in 2014, WASP-96b is located 1,150 light-years from Earth. It has half the mass of Jupiter and completes an orbit around its star every 3.4 days.
The Southern Ring Nebula, also called the “Eight-Burst,” is 2,000 light-years away from Earth. This large planetary nebula includes an expanding cloud of gas around a dying star.
The space telescope’s view of Stephan’s Quintet will reveal the way galaxies interact with one another. This compact galaxy group, first discovered in 1787, is located 290 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. Four of the five galaxies in the group “are locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters,” according to a NASA statement.
Among the most anticipated of targets in the release, SMACS 0723 is where a massive group of galaxy clusters act as a magnifying glass for the objects behind them. Called gravitational lensing, this will create Webb’s first deep field view of incredibly old and distant, faint galaxies. It will be the deepest humans have ever looked into the universe.
The targets were selected by an international committee, including members from NASA, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
Looking ahead
These will be the first of many images to come from Webb, the most powerful telescope ever launched into space. The mission, originally expected to last for 10 years, has enough excess fuel capability to operate for 20 years, according to NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy.
“Webb can see backwards in time just after the big bang by looking for galaxies that are so far away, the light has taken many billions of years to get from those galaxies to ourselves,” said Jonathan Gardner, Webb deputy senior project scientist at NASA, during a recent news conference. “Webb is bigger than Hubble so that it can see fainter galaxies that are further away.”
The initial goal for the telescope was to see the first stars and galaxies of the universe, essentially watching “the universe turn the lights on for the first time,” said Eric Smith, Webb program scientist and NASA Astrophysics Division chief scientist.
Smith has worked on Webb since the project began in the mid-1990s.
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