Evidence of the United States government's continued interest in its space program, President JoeBiden unveiled and unveiled the first-ever public image of the James Webb Space Telescope.
And unsurprisingly, it is spectacular from both a scientific and technical point of view. It shows us a wide variety of objects from different ages in the Universe, some of which are “old” a hundred million years.
Now called the “James Webb’s First Deep Field,” this image of SMACS 0723 is the deepest, sharpest infrared view of the distant Universe to date.
There appear thousands of galaxies including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared.
Despite this number, they represent only a tiny part of the Universe, the equivalent of a grain of sand held at arm's length by someone standing on the ground. It was taken by James Webb's NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) instrument. It was built from shots captured at different wavelengths, during an observation period of 12.5 hours.
The image shows galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it looked 4.6 billion years ago. The combined mass of this cluster of galaxies acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying galaxies much farther behind it whose light took 13 billion years to reach us.
Their light appears, distorted, in the form of gravitational arcs around the center of the image. The very bright white dots with diffraction peaks are stars in our galaxy.
The white halo-shaped areas are other, closer galaxies. Scientists will now analyze this deep field of the James Webb to determine the age and nature of the different structures that appear there.
Continuation of the images on Tuesday
The following images of this genuine surprise bag will be revealed during a NASA online event on Tuesday morning.
They must both impress the general public with their beauty, but also demonstrate to astronomers around the world all the power of the four scientific instruments on board.