Proof of the US government’s unwavering interest in its space program, President Joe Biden unveiled and presented the first-ever public image of the James-Webb Space Telescope. And unsurprisingly, it is spectacular from both a scientific and technical point of view. It shows us a wide variety of objects at different ages in the Universe, some of which are “old” a hundred million years.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the deepest, sharpest infrared image ofuniverse distant so far. Known as “Webb’s First Deep Field”, this image of thecluster of galaxies Smacs 0723 is overflowing with details.
This image was presented on July 12, at 12:15 a.m. by United States President Joe Biden.
This deep field, taken by the near-infrared camera Nircam, is a composite made from images acquired at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours of exposure. The image shows, as announced, the galaxy cluster Smacs 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. The mass combination of this cluster of galaxies acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying galaxies much more distant behind it, revealing galaxies and clusters ofstars much older, distant and above all never seen. Some of these distant objects would be only 100 million years old!
End of the James-Webb commissioning process
After several months of preparation, remember that James-Webb was launched on December 25, 2021, the observatory completed its commissioning activities only a few days ago. The 17 ways or “modes” of operation of scientific instruments have all been verified and are operational. This first image made public on July 12, 2022 and the others which will be made public in the coming hours, at the end of the afternoon, kick off the start of the scientific operations of the telescope which should operate for at least 20 years!
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