:strip_icc()/i.s3.glbimg.com/v1/AUTH_59edd422c0c84a879bd37670ae4f538a/internal_photos/bs/2022/M/X/CoWU43QAitVqW5f0xvRA/fxazugrwiaqzmml.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1)
The first color image released by the new James Webb Space Telescope is said to be the deepest and most detailed infrared view of the Universe to date, containing light from galaxies that took billions of years to reach us.
–
The image was shown to US President Joe Biden during a meeting at the White House.
–
On Tuesday (12/07) the Nasa (American space agency) publishes other images made by the equipment.
–
–
See the structures of the James Webb Telescope
– –
US President Joe Biden wanted to highlight the country’s investment in the telescope: “These images will remind the world that the United States can do great things and remind the American people – especially our children – that there is nothing beyond our ability.” .
–
“We can see possibilities no one has ever seen before. We can go to places no one has ever gone before.”
–
The James Webb, launched on December 25 of last year, cost US$ 10 billion (about R$ 53 billion) and is the successor to the famous Hubble space telescope.
–
–
James Webb and Hubble compared — Photo: BBC
– –
It will make all sorts of observations of the sky, but its two main goals are to probe distant planets to see if they might be habitable, and to image the first stars to shine in the Universe more than 13.5 billion years ago.
–
What is seen in the image is a cluster of galaxies in the constellation of Volans in the Southern Hemisphereknown by the name of SMACS 0723.
–
The cluster itself is about 4.6 billion light-years away. That is, the telescope sees into the past.
–
It is the consequence of light having a finite speed in a vast and expanding cosmos.
–
Probing deeper and deeper, the objective is to recover the light of the pioneer stars as they clustered in the first galaxies.
–
–
How James Webb will see the past — Photo: BBC
– –
Webb, with its 6.5 m wide golden mirror and supersensitive infrared instruments, was able to detect in this image the distorted shape (the red arcs) of galaxies that existed just 600 million years after the Big Bang (the Universe has 13, 8 billion years).
–
Scientists claim that, by the quality of the data produced by Webb, the telescope detects space far beyond the most distant object in this image.
–
As a consequence, it is possible that this is the deepest cosmic field of view ever obtained.
–
–
The James Webb is so big it needs to be folded up to fit the nose of its launch rocket — Photo: Nasa
– –
The telescope also undertakes a very basic and long-asked question: where do we come from?
–
When the Universe was formed in the Big Bang, it contained only hydrogen, helium and a handful of lithium. Just it.
–
All chemical elements on the periodic table heavier than these three had to be formed in stars.
–
All the carbon that makes up living beings; all the nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere; all the silicon in the rocks — all these atoms had to be “manufactured” in the nuclear reactions that make the stars shine and the powerful explosions that end their existence.
–
Our planet is the result of the first stars and their descendants that “seeded” the Universe with the material to make things.
–
The scientists of Nasa are confident about James Webb’s results.
–
“I’ve seen the first images and they are spectacular,” said one of the project’s heads, scientist Amber Straughn. “They are amazing in themselves as images. But what they suggest for our research is what makes me so excited,” she told BBC News.
– –
:quality(80)/cdn-kiosk-api.telegraaf.nl/b233810c-01a6-11ed-8c83-02d1dbdc35d1.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1)
