NASA presents new images from the James Webb telescope

NASA released this Tuesday (12) the new batch of images from the James Webb Space Telescope.

The photos show how Webb’s cameras can peer through cosmic dust, paving the way for astronomers to understand how stars form and showing more detail about black holes.

According to the US space agency, the new data contains “never-before-seen” details.

James Webb is the world’s leading space science observatory and is an international program led by NASA in partnership with ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

Carina Nebula

One of the captures was taken in a region of a star called NGC 3324, in the Carina Nebula. The area is known as “Cosmic Cliffs” and looks like mountains.

NASA explains that the edge of the giant gaseous cavity inside the star, and the highest “peaks” in this image are about seven light-years high.

“The cavernous area was carved into the nebula by intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely massive, hot young stars located in the center of the bubble, above the area shown in this image,” they wrote.

Stephan’s Quintet

The image of the five galaxies, called Stephan’s Quintet, or Hickson Compact Group 92 (HCG 92), is the largest Webb image yet, NASA said.

The photo covers about a fifth of the Moon’s diameter. It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from nearly 1,000 separate image files.

According to the space agency, the telescope’s information provides new insights into how galactic interactions may have driven the evolution of galaxies in the early universe.

Although it’s called a “quintet”, only four of the galaxies are actually close together and involved in a “cosmic dance”.

The fifth galaxy, which is furthest to the left, is called NGC 7320 and is very much in the foreground compared to the other four.

It is located 40 million light-years from Earth, while the other four galaxies (NGC 7317, NGC 7318A, NGC 7318B and NGC 7319) are around 290 million light-years away.

NASA explains that the distance is still quite close in cosmic terms, compared to more distant galaxies billions of light years from us.

“Studying relatively nearby galaxies like these helps scientists better understand structures seen in a much more distant universe,” they wrote.

south ring nebula

The star NGC 3132, informally known as the Southern Ring Nebula, is approximately 2,500 light-years away from Earth.

To take the photo, two cameras were needed aboard the James Webb.

In this planetary nebula, the darkest star at the center has been sending rings of gas and dust for thousands of years in all directions.

first image

On Monday (11), NASA showed the first color image from the James Webb telescope. The disclosure of the photograph was made by the President of the United States, Joe Biden.

Last week, NASA published a list of the five celestial objects chosen for Webb’s debut. Among them are two nebulae — huge clouds of gas and dust thrown into space by stellar explosions that form nurseries for new stars — and two sets of galaxy clusters.

Webb mainly uses the infrared spectrum for its observations and is about 100 times more sensitive than the Hubble Space Telescope — which is orbiting the Earth at 547 kilometers away and operates mainly in the optical and ultraviolet areas.