As a worthy successor to Hubble, the James Webb Telescope is the protagonist of a historical event. It is that, by the hand of President Joe Biden from the White House, they released the first high-quality image of the cosmos taken by the largest and most sophisticated of the telescopes ever built. Meanwhile, this Tuesday, the rest of the photographs captured so far will be released, in an event that will be broadcast live.
Last Friday, NASA had disclosed the top five Webb targets . However, he had warned that the real “jewels” would be revealed this week. As they explained, they are “unprecedented” images that allow us to observe in detail “remote galaxies, bright nebulae and a distant gas giant planet.”
“Since the beginning, human beings have looked to the sky,” Vice President Kamala Harris said during the presentation, noting, “We are entering a new phase of scientific discovery.” At her turn, after highlighting the work of scientists, Biden assured: “Today is a historic day.”
As they explained, “This first image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date.” Known as the first Webb Deep Field, this image of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is packed with detail. Thousands of galaxies, including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared, have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground”.
On the official NASA website, the experts pointed out that in the image “thousands of galaxies can be identified -including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared”, and that “this portion of the vast universe would appear the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length to a person observing from the ground.
“This deep field, taken with Webb’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite image of images at different wavelengths, with a total of 12.5 hours of exposure, reaching greater depths. in infrared wavelengths than those of the Hubble Space Telescope’s deepest fields, which took weeks,” the experts explained.
