Monday, 23 December 2024
Monday, 23 December 2024
The Webb telescope’s image of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 includes thousands of galaxies, including the faintest objects ever observed in infrared. The light from SMACS 0723 in this image is 4.6 billion years old.
In an undated image provided by Northrop Grumman, work was performed on the James Webb Space Telescope at Northrop Grumman in California in April 2020. The largest space telescope ever built is ready to show us what it’s been looking at for the past six months.
Stars and galaxies captured by the James Webb Space Telescope using its Fine Guidance Sensor, which helps the telescope ensure precision when it aims at its targets. Webb scientists said this test image, made up of 72 exposures over 32 hours, was one of the deepest images of the universe ever taken.
The Carina Nebula, one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky, located approximately 7,600 light-years away, is a nursery for new stars.
The telescope’s targets include the Southern Ring Nebula, a planetary nebula, which is an expanding cloud of gas, surrounding a dying star. It is 2,000 light-years away and half a light-year across.
SMACS 0723, another target, is an area where massive foreground galaxies magnify and distort the light of objects behind them, allowing deep views into very distant and intrinsically faint galaxy clusters.
Sparkly spiders. Stephan’s Quintet, one of the first compact galaxy groups ever observed, in 1877, is 290 million light-years away. The bluish galaxy in the foreground is only 40 million light-years away.
