![]() ![]() The collection also includes a galaxy clusters known as Stephan's Quintet, which was first discovered in 1877 and encompasses several galaxies described by NASA as "locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters." ![]() This is the most exciting free-floating planet candidate so far and the closest such. Among them are two enormous clouds of gas and dust blasted into space by stellar explosions to form incubators for new stars - the Carina Nebula and the Southern Ring Nebula, each thousands of light years away from Earth. This gives a glimpse of the far-future fate of the Solar System. The much larger light-collecting surface of Webb's primary mirror - an array of 18 hexagonal segments of gold-coated beryllium metal - enables it to observe objects at greater distances, thus further back in time, than Hubble or any other telescope.Īll five of Webb's introductory targets were previously known to scientists. With Webb now finely tuned and fully focused, scientists will embark on a competitively selected list of missions exploring the evolution of galaxies, the life cycles of stars, the atmospheres of distant exoplanets and the moons of our outer solar system.īuilt to view its subjects chiefly in the infrared spectrum, Webb is about 100 times more sensitive than its 30-year-old predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, which operates mainly at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths. ![]() The highly anticipated release of its first imagery follows six months of remotely unfurling Webb's various components, aligning its mirrors and calibrating instruments. It was launched to space for NASA and its European and Canadian counterparts on Christmas Day 2021 from French Guiana, on the northeastern coast of South America. Webb was constructed under contract by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp. #Telescope glimpses freefloating Patch#The thousands of galaxies were captured in a tiny patch of the sky roughly the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length by someone standing on Earth, Nelson said. These include SMACS 0723, a bejeweled-like sliver of the distant cosmos that according to NASA offers "the most detailed view of the early universe to date." It also constitutes the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant cosmos ever taken. On Friday, the space agency posted a list of five celestial subjects chosen for its showcase debut of Webb. He was joined at the Old Executive Office Building of the White House complex by Vice President Kamala Harris, who chairs the U.S. "And today we're going to get a glimpse of the first light to shine through that window: light from other worlds, orbiting stars far beyond our own. "It's a new window into the history of our universe," Biden said before the picture was unveiled. That makes it just 800 million years younger than the Big Bang, the theoretical flashpoint that set the expansion of the known universe in motion some 13.8 billion years ago. At least one of the faint, older specs of light appearing in the "background" of the photo - a composite of images of different wavelengths of light - dates back more than 13 billion years, Nelson said. ![]()
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