United States President Joe Biden has revealed the first glimpse of how the massive James Webb Space Telescope will change the way people see the universe and shows the deepest view of the universe ever captured.
The Democratic leader has released one of the space telescope's first images and shows SMACS 0723, where a massive group of galaxy clusters acts as a magnifying glass for the objects behind them. Known as gravitational lensing, this created Webb's first deep field view of incredibly old and distant, faint galaxies.
James Webb Telescope
The reveal of the image occurred at the White House during a preview event with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. The official noted that the image is the "deepest image of our universe that has ever been taken."
Some of the distant galaxies and star clusters that could be seen in the recently-unveiled image have never been seen before. Furthermore, astronomers estimate that the galaxy cluster is shown as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago, as per CNN.
NASA also said that the image shows a "slice of the vast universe" that "covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length by someone on the ground." The photo, which was taken by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera, is composed of images taken at different wavelengths of light over the course of 12.5 hours.
The rest of the high-resolution color images taken by the space telescope will make their debut on Tuesday, July 12. The space observatory, which was first launched in December, will be able to peer inside the atmospheres of exoplanets and observe some of the first galaxies created after the universe was formed by viewing them through infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye.
According to PBS News Hour, during a media briefing, Webb's deputy project scientist, Jonathan Gardner, said that the space telescope can see backward in time to just after the Big Bang by looking for galaxies that are so far away that the light has taken many billions of years to get from those galaxies to our telescopes.
The Deepest Look Into The Universe
Project scientist Klaus Pontoppidan said last month that astronomers will soon do intricate calculations to determine just how old these galaxies are. The expert said that the deepest view of the cosmos "is not a record that will stand for very long" since scientists are expected to use Webb to go even deeper into the universe.
The first image from the Webb Space Telescope represents a historic moment for science and technology. For astronomy and space exploration.
— President Biden (@POTUS) July 11, 2022
And for America and all humanity. pic.twitter.com/cI2UUQcQXj
NASA's science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, said that when he saw the images, he got emotional and so did his colleagues. He said, "It's really hard to not look at the universe in new light and not just have a moment that is deeply personal."
Some of the images included in the Tuesday release will show how galaxies interact and how they grow to such massive sizes. Other images will depict the life cycle of stars, from the emergence of new ones to violent stellar deaths. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are expected to be briefed by NASA prior to the release that was scheduled to show the first image at 5:00 p.m. ET, NBC News reported.
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