The Webb telescope just took the deepest photo of the universe ever

[Judi Lynn]

5. Astronomer Working With Webb Said the new Images "Almost Brought him to Tears." We'll see Them on Ju

Astronomer Working With Webb Said the new Images “Almost Brought him to Tears.” We’ll see Them on July 12th

POSTED ON JULY 3, 2022



The scientific and astronomical community are eagerly waiting for Tuesday, July 12th, to come around. On this day, the first images taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be released! According to a previous statement by the agency, these images will include the deepest views of the Universe ever taken and spectra obtained from an exoplanet atmosphere. In another statement issued yesterday, the images were so beautiful that they almost brought Thomas Zarbuchen – Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) – to tears!

The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful and complex observatory ever deployed, not to mention the most expensive ($10 billion)! Because of its complex system of mirrors and its advanced sun shield, the telescope had to be designed so that it could be folded up (origami style) to fit inside a payload fairing, then unfold once it reached space. To ensure everything would work, the telescope had to be rigorously tested, a process that caused several delays and cost overruns (a situation made worse by the COVID pandemic).

Since it launched on Christmas Day in 2021, the observatory has successfully unfolded, commissioned its science instruments, and reached the L2 Lagrange Point, where it will remain for its entire mission. It also successfully aligned all 18 of its segmented mirrors, which are arranged in a honeycomb configuration that measures 6.5 meters (more than 21 feet) in diameter – almost three times the size of Hubble’s primary mirror. Previously, NASA released test images the JWST took of a star 2,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major (HD 84406).

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The James Webb images peer even further into the cosmos and reveal what galaxies looked like just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. These earliest galaxies were instrumental in dispelling the “Cosmic Dark Ages,” a period where the Universe was permeated by neutral hydrogen atoms and therefore invisible to modern instruments. Astronomers know what the Universe looked like just prior to this period, thanks to the relic radiation from the Big Bang, which is visible to our instruments – the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).

More:
https://www.universetoday.com/156539/astronomer-working-with-webb-said-the-new-images-almost-brought-him-to-tears-well-see-them-on-july-12th/