The latest picture released by the James Webb telescope has given us a breathtaking view and never before seen details of several structures like galaxy groups, exoplanets, nebulae and more.
Deep field image- SMACS 0723
This was the first field image of the James telescope and its first full-color image. Released by president Joe Biden, it is the deepest and the sharpest infrared image of our distant universe and it showcases the powerful capability of Webb’s mission. The galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, and is teeming with thousands of galaxies. This first full-color image reveals the thousands of galaxies including the faint objects ever observed in infrared. The same picture was taken by the Hubble Telescope but now comparing it with Webb’s deep field it is really showing the potential of this telescope. This image covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length. The combined mass of this Galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens which helps to magnify more distant galaxies including some of the galaxies which are a billion years old. This Deep Field image taken by James Webb Space Telescope is a mosaic made from different wavelengths totally of 12.5 hours. It shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago, with many more galaxies in front of and behind the cluster. Much more about this cluster will be revealed as researchers begin digging into Webb’s data. This field was also imaged by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument which observes mid-infrared light. Webb’s NIRCam has brought distant galaxies into sharp focus – they have tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features.
Stephen’s Quintet
One of our targets was Stephan’s Quintet, a galaxy group named by the French astronomer Édouard Stephan in 1877. This new image released by James Webb Space Telescope shows rare and mysterious detail of how the interacting Galaxies triggered an enormous star formation between each other and how gas in galaxies is disturbed by this interaction. It shows the outflow driven by a black hole in Stephen’s Quintet. This may be more common in the early stage of the universe when superheated, infalling materials would have fuelled every energetic black hole at the time. Even today the topmost Galaxy in this group harbors an active galactic nucleus with a supermassive black hole that is 24 million times the mass of our Sun. By actively pulling in materials, it puts out light energy equivalent to 40 billion Suns. Webb is now Actively studying the Galactic nucleus in greater detail with a Near-infrared spectrograph (NIRSpec) and mid-infrared instrument(MIRI). These instruments’ Integral field units(IFUs)-which are a combination and the coordination of camera and spectrograph provided by the Webb team have given us a “data cube”.
The Carina Nebula
Another picture released by James Webb Space Telescope was the Carina Nebula. The Carina Nebula is an enormous massive cloud of dust and gas and is about 7600 light-years away from Earth. These sharp pictures taken by Webb reveal emerging stellar nurseries and individual stars that were completely hidden in our older visible-light pictures. James Webb telescope is extremely sensitive to infrared light which makes it capable of peering through the cosmic dust to see these objects. Proto Stellar jets as you can see clearly in this image, shoot out from some of these young stars. The youngest source appears as a red dot in the dark, dusty region of the cloud. This new image of NGC 3324 by the James Webb telescope will help scientists to better understand the process of star formation because of the spatial resolution it offers. Star birth propagates over time, triggered by the expansion of the eroding cavity. As the bright, ionized rim moves into the nebula, it slowly pushes into the gas and dust. If the rim encounters any unstable material, the increased pressure will trigger the material to collapse and form new stars. As they form, these smaller stars create narrow, opposing jets seen here, which can inject a lot of momentum and energy into the clouds. This reduces the fraction of nebular material that seeds new stars. Up to this point, scientists have had very little data about the influence of the multitude of young and more energetic low-mass stars. With Webb, they will be able to obtain a full census of their number and impact throughout the nebula. NGC 3324 was first cataloged by James Dunlop in 1826. Visible from the Southern Hemisphere, it is located at the northwest corner of the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372).
Gas giant exoplanet: WASP-96 b
The Webb also revealed an atmospheric composition of a distant planet. James Webb’s enormous mirror and a precise measurement joined forces to capture the most detailed measurement of the atmospheric chemical composition of a distant plan outside our solar system this is measured by filtering the starlight through the atmospheric layer of a plant. The spectrum of light that contains information makeup the planetary atmosphere, along with evidence for clouds and haze, in the atmosphere surrounding a hot, puffy gas giant planet orbiting a distant Sun-like star. Scientists are amazed by James Webb’s unprecedented ability to analyze the chemical composition of the atmospheric layer of a distant Galaxy which was hundreds of light years away. WASP-96 b is one of more than 5000 confirmed exoplanets in the Milky Way galaxy. It was located 1,150 light-years away in the southern Sky constellation Phoenix. Large size, short orbital period, puffy atmosphere, and lack of contaminating light from objects nearby in the sky make WASP-96 b an ideal target for atmospheric observations. The curvature of the light from his star confirms the property of the planet that had already been determined from other observations– the existence, size, and orbit of the planet. A signature of water, an indication of haze, and evidence of clouds have been revealed by the data that were thought not to exist on the base of prayer of observation. Scientists and researchers can use this data to measure the amount of water content in the atmosphere and able to search for various elements like carbon and oxygen and can predict the temperature of the atmosphere in depth. Further, they can use this information to make inferences about the overall makeup of the planet as well as how when and where it formed. This precise measurement is possible because of the state-of-the-art design of its 270 square ft. gold coated mirror which collects the infrared light efficiently, its precise spectrography which spread light into multiple colors, and its sensitive infrared detector which measures extremely subtle differences in brightness.
All this was the outcome of a partnership between NASA, European space agency and the Canadian space agency.
Reference:
- NASA
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