NASA shares list of cosmic targets for first Webb telescope images

Get ready to see the universe like we’ve never seen it before.

O James Webb Space Telescope will release its first high-resolution color images on July 12, one of which “is the deepest image that has ever been taken of our universe,” according to the administrator of the NASA Bill Nelson.

The space observatory, launched in December 2022, will be able to peer inside the atmospheres of exoplanets – that is, celestial bodies that are outside the solar system – and observe some of the first galaxies created after the beginning of the universe, viewing them through infrared light. , invisible to the human eye.

The first image release will highlight Webb’s scientific capabilities, as well as its ability to produce spectacular portraits of its massive golden mirror and scientific instruments.

Are you ready to #UnfoldTheUniverse?

Join us July 12 at 10:30 am ET (14:30 UTC), Webb’s first full-color images & data are revealed one by one! watch on @NASA‘s streaming platforms: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, DailyMotion.

(Voice and imagery used with permission.) pic.twitter.com/eakt5xiPEr

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) July 7, 2022

Webb’s first five cosmic targets were shared by NASA this Friday (8), which provided a teaser of what we can expect at launch.

The spots to be photographed were selected by an international committee, including members of NASA, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

One of the targets is the Carina Nebula, located 7,600 light-years away. This stellar nursery is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky and is home to stars much more massive than our Sun.

In addition, the first color spectrum of an exoplanet, known as WASP-96b, will also be shared on Tuesday (12). The image will include different wavelengths of light that could reveal new information, such as finding out whether the planet located 1,150 light-years from Earth has an atmosphere.

The gas giant planet, which was discovered in 2014 and is half the mass of Jupiter, completes an orbit around its star every 3.4 days.

The third is the Southern Ring Nebula, also called the “Eight-Burst”, which is 2,000 light-years away from our planet. This large planetary nebula has an expanding cloud of gas around a dying star.

Stephan’s Quintet, also expected at launch, will reveal how galaxies interact with one another. This compact group of galaxies, first discovered in 1787, is located 290 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus.

The final target is SMACS 0723, where a huge group of galaxy clusters acts 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 galaxies. It will be the deepest that humans have ever looked into the universe.

The telescope’s initial goal was to see the cosmos’s first stars and galaxies, essentially watching “the universe turn on the lights for the first time,” said Eric Smith, Webb program scientist and chief scientist in NASA’s Astrophysics Division.

Smith has worked on Webb since the project’s inception in the mid-1990s.

“The James Webb Space Telescope will give us a powerful new set of eyes to examine our universe,” Smith wrote in an update. “The world is about to be new again.”