The images come from NASA’s James Webb Telescope, and University of Guelph physics professor Jason “Orbax the Great” Thomas says these images offer us a deep look into space.
“There’s light from 13 billion years ago,” Thomas said. “It blows my mind.”
The galaxy cluster SMACS-0273 is the first image revealed by NASA’s $10 billion telescope.
“If you pick up a grain of sand at arm’s length and hold it up to the sky, that’s the window we’re looking at,” Thomas said. “This is the pocket of the universe we’re seeing, and there’s a lot more universe to explore.”
Thomas said the first few images are just the beginning of what the telescope is capable of revealing.
“It gives us images that we may not have seen before, information that may have been scattered before, but we may not have seen,” Thomas said.
“What we see are galaxies, stars, planets, nebulae, space dust,” Thomas said. “We see everything that’s out there.”
Thomas says that continuing to observe distant galaxies could solve mysteries such as the origin of our universe and our place in it.
He adds that we are trying to find potential planets that would be habitable for life and planets that may have had life.
NASA also released images of the “Stephen Quintet,” a view of five tightly clustered galaxies, a black hole and the “Carina Nebula,” a snapshot of where stars are born.
Thomas says the telescope also carries spectrometers that help scientists study other planets like “WASP-96b,” a gas giant planet that shows water vapor in its atmosphere.
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