GREENBELT, Md. –
A sparkling landscape of baby stars. A frothy blue and orange view of a dying star. Five galaxies in cosmic dance. The magnificence of the universe shone through in a new set of images released Tuesday by NASA’s powerful new telescope.
The discovery by the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope began Monday at the White House with a sneak peek of the first image — a medley of distant galaxies that have penetrated deeper into space than humanity has ever seen.
Tuesday’s releases showed parts of the universe observed by other telescopes. But Webb’s sheer power, remote location from Earth and use of the infrared spectrum showed them in a new light.
“That’s the beauty, but also the story,” John Mather, NASA’s Nobel laureate Webb senior scientist, said after the discovery. “This is the story of where we came from.”
And, he said, the more he looked at the images, the more he became convinced that life existed elsewhere in those thousands of stars and hundreds of galaxies.
With Webb, scientists hope to glimpse light from the first stars and galaxies that formed 13.7 billion years ago, just 100 million years after the Big Bang that created the universe. The telescope will also scan the atmospheres of alien worlds for possible signs of life.
“Each image is a new discovery, and each one will give humanity insights into humanity that we’ve never seen before,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Tuesday, enthusing about images showing “the formation of stars engulfing black holes.”
Webb’s use of the infrared light spectrum allows the telescope to see through cosmic dust and see distant light from the corners of the universe, scientists said.
“We have really changed the understanding of our universe,” said ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher.
The European and Canadian space agencies joined NASA in building the telescope, which launched in December after years of delays and cost overruns. Webb is considered the successor to the highly successful but outdated Hubble Space Telescope.
Some of Hubble’s most stunning images are pictures of the Carina Nebula, one of the brightest star nurseries in the sky, about 7,600 light-years away. Webb Project Scientist Klaus Pontoppidan decided to focus one of Webb’s early looks on this spot because he knew it would be a framing beautiful photo. The result was an image of a colorful landscape of bubbles and cavities where stars were born.
“It’s art,” Pontoppidan said. “I really wanted to have this landscape. There is this contrast. We have the blue one. We have golden. It’s dark. There is bright. There is only a sharp image.”
Set for release Thursday: A close-up of Jupiter that shows one of its faint rings and several of its moons, he said.
More among the new shots:
- The Southern Ring Nebula, sometimes called the “burst of eight”. The images show a dying star with a frothy edge of escaping gas. It is about 2,500 light years away. One light year is 5.8 trillion miles. “This is the end for this star, but the beginning for other stars,” Pontoppidan said. As it dies, it ejects parts that seed the galaxy with elements used to make new stars, he said.
- Stephan’s Quintet, five galaxies in a cosmic dance that was first seen 225 years ago in the constellation Pegasus. It includes a black hole that scientists said shows material “gobbled up by this kind of cosmic monster.” Webb “just gave us a new, unprecedented view from 290 million years ago of what this Quintet is doing,” Cornell University astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger, who is not part of Webb’s team, said in an email.
- A giant planet called WASP-96b. It is about the size of Saturn and is 1150 light years away. A gas planet, it is not a candidate for life elsewhere, but it is a key target for astronomers. Instead of an image, the telescope uses its infrared detectors to look at the chemical composition of the planet’s atmosphere. It showed water vapor in the super-hot planet’s atmosphere and even found the chemical spectrum of neon, showing clouds where astronomers thought there were none.
The images were released one by one at an event at NASA’s Goddard Space Center, which featured cheerleaders wearing pompoms the color of the telescope’s gold mirrors.
“It excites you. It’s so beautiful,” Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s science mission manager, said after the event. “Nature is beautiful. To me, that’s beauty.”
The world’s largest and most powerful space telescope took off last December from French Guiana in South America. It reached its vantage point 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth in January. Then began the long process of aligning the mirrors, cooling the infrared detectors enough to work, and calibrating the science instruments, all protected by a canopy the size of a tennis court.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Division is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Science Education Division. AP is solely responsible for all content.
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