In the publication of the pictures, a sneak peek was already taken at night, when US President Joe Biden presented the first taste.
16:11•Updated 18:03
The first images taken by the largest and most powerful space telescope to date will be presented at an event by the US space agency NASA. You can follow the live broadcast in connection with this story.
The photos were taken by the former head of NASA by James Webb with the named space telescope. There will be pictures of four new objects.
– Today, people around the Earth are seeing things from the universe that have never been seen before, added the Director General of NASA Bill Nelson expectations before the presentation of new images.
The first one presented was the photo that was published last night, because the publication took a stealthy departure when the US president Joe Biden got to see the first new picture.
The image shows a massive galaxy cluster called SMACS 0723.
Most of the points of light in the first published image are very distant galaxies. The picture offers the “deepest” snapshot into the history of the universe so far.
As the second image, an image of the exoplanet WASP-96 b was presented. It is an exoplanet in the southern starry sky in the constellation Phoenix, orbiting the star WASP-96.
It is a large planet that is mostly made of gas like Jupiter, but is roughly half the mass of Jupiter. It is about 1,150 light years from Earth and was discovered in 2014.
Thirdly, an image of NGC 3132 was presented. It is the Southern Ring Nebula, a planetary nebula about 2,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Purjee. So it is a gas cloud thrown around by a dead star, which is expanding all the time. It is one of the best-studied planetary nebulae, so it is easy to compare Webb’s results with previous observations.
The telescope set off on Christmas Day
The James Webb Space Telescope was launched into space on December 25, 2021. Since then, the device has been prepared for scientific observations. When everything was ready last week, the first scientific observations began.
The images and information to be published now are the results of these observations. More detailed information and findings will be shared tomorrow, Wednesday.
It is a collaboration between the US space agency NASA, the European Space Agency ESA and the Canadian Space Agency CSA.