This year marked the end of the decades long wait for astrologers. The James Webb Space Telescope is finally in action.
The telescope, which was launched in December 2021, released its first science data in July (SN: 8/13/22, p. 30) and immediately began to exceed the expectations of astronomers.
“James Webb is more sensitive than we predicted,” says astronomer Sasha Hinkley of the University of Exeter in England. In September, his team released the telescope’s first direct image of an exoplanet (SN: 9/24/22, p. 6). He credits “the people who worked so hard to get this right, to launch something the size of a tennis court into space in a rocket” and get this sensitive device to work perfectly. And I feel incredibly lucky to have this benefit.’
The telescope, also known as JWST, is designed to see further into the history of the world than ever before.SN: 10/9/21 & 10/23/21, p. 26). The Hubble Space Telescope is larger and more sensitive than its predecessor. And because it looks at many longer wavelengths of light, JWST can see distant and obscured objects that were previously hidden.
JWST has spent the first several months collecting data for scientists from “early-release,” observations that can test different telescope paths. “It’s a very new tool,” says Lamiya Mowla, an astrologer at the University of Toronto. “It will take some time before we can record all the different observational modes of all four instruments that are on board.”
The need to test more excitement led to some confusion for astrologers in these very early days. The data from the telescope had been in such high demand that the operators had not yet calibrated all the detectors before the data was released. The JWST team provides calibration data so that researchers can correctly analyze the data. “We knew there were going to be calibration issues,” Mowla says.
The raw numbers that scientists have drawn from some of the initial images can be revised slightly. And the images themselves are real and accurate, although some of the telescope’s techniques to convert the infrared data into visible light put on different colors.SN: 3/17/18, p. 4).
The stunning images that follow are just a few of the first biggest hits from the bright new observation.
A deep space
JWST has not yet captured the deepest views of the universe (above). The galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 (red galaxy) is 4.6 billion light-years from Earth. Acting like a giant cosmic lens, the JWST launch zooms in on thousands of even more distant galaxies that glowed 13 billion years ago (the red, more extended galaxies). Far different galaxies in mid-infrared light (above left) captured by the telescope instrument than they do in near-infrared light (above right) captured by NIRCam. The first traces of dust; the second, the star. The first galaxies have stars but very little dust.
Circuit Neptunia
JWST was built to peer across vast cosmic distances, but it also provides new insights into the nearest solar system. This picture of Neptune is the first close-up look we’ve had of its delicate rings in over 30 years (SN: 11/5/22, p. 5).
Under pressure
The rings in this wonderful image are not an optical illusion. You are dust, and a new ring is added every eight years, when the two stars in the center of the image approach each other. One star is the Lupus-Rayet star, which is in the last phase of its life and is dying into dust. Cyclic dusty eruptions allowed scientists to directly measure for the first time how the pressure of the star’s light pushes the dust around (SN: 11/19/22, p. 6).
Galaxy hit-and-run
With JWST’s unprecedented sensitivity, astronomers plan to compare early galaxies with more recent galaxies to understand how galaxies grow and evolve. This galactic smashup, whose main remnants are known as the Cartwheel Galaxy, shows a step in that epic process (SN Online: 8/3/22). The large central galaxy (right in the above composite) is in the middle of the smaller one, which has been pierced (not seen) as it flees the scene. The Hubble Space Telescope snapped an image of the scene before visible light (top half). But with infrared eyes, JWST has much more structure and complexity in the inner galaxy (bottom half).
Exoplanet image
The gas giant HIP 65426b is the first exoplanet to have its image captured by JWST (each line shows the planet in a different light source; the star symbol shows the location of the planet’s parent star). This image, released by Astrologer Sasha Hinkley and colleagues, doesn’t look much like some of the other space spectacles seen at JWST. But it will give clues to what makes up the planet’s atmosphere and the telescope will demonstrate the potential to do more of this kind of work on even smaller exoplanets, rocky exoplanets.SN: 9/24/22, p. 6).
Shake the dust off
Another classic Hubble image updated by JWST is the Pillars of Creation. When Hubble viewed this star region in visible light, it was covered in dust (above left). JWST’s infrared vision opens up the twinkling stars at birth (above right).
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