![]() Four previous micrometeoroid strikes to the mirror were smaller. It’s comprised of 18 segments, one of which was smacked by a bigger than anticipated micrometeoroid in May. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s science mission chief said when he saw the images he got emotional and so did his colleagues: “It’s really hard to not look at the universe in new light and not just have a moment that is deeply personal.”Īt 21 feet, Webb’s gold-plated, flower-shaped mirror is the biggest and most sensitive ever sent into space. The deepest view of the cosmos “is not a record that will stand for very long,” Pontoppidan said, since scientists are expected to use the telescope to go even deeper. READ MORE: NASA’s new space telescope sees 1st starlight, takes selfie How far back did that first image look? Over the next few days, astronomers will do intricate calculations to figure out just how old those galaxies are, project scientist Klaus Pontoppidan said last month. “Webb can see backwards in time to just after the Big Bang by looking for galaxies that are so far away that the light has taken many billions of years to get from those galaxies to our telescopes,” said Jonathan Gardner, Webb’s deputy project scientist said during the media briefing. Astronomers measure how far back they look in light-years with one light-year being 5.8 trillion miles (9.3 trillion kilometers). ![]() It found the light wave signature of an extremely bright galaxy in 2016. ![]() Hubble has stared as far back as 13.4 billion years. Webb is considered the successor to the highly successful, but aging Hubble Space Telescope. The plan is to use the telescope to peer back so far that scientists will get a glimpse of the early days of the universe about 13.7 billion years ago and zoom in on closer cosmic objects, even our own solar system, with sharper focus. READ MORE: Bigger and more powerful than the Hubble, NASA’s new telescope will see the ‘awe-inspiring’ Then the lengthy process began to align the mirrors, get the infrared detectors cold enough to operate and calibrate the science instruments, all protected by a sunshade the size of a tennis court that keeps the telescope cool. It reached its lookout point 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth in January. The world’s biggest and most powerful space telescope rocketed away last December from French Guiana in South America. The images on tap for Tuesday include a view of a giant gaseous planet outside our solar system, two images of a nebula where stars are born and die in spectacular beauty and an update of a classic image of five tightly clustered galaxies that dance around each other. “And it’s a view that we’ve never seen before.” “We’re going to give humanity a new view of the cosmos,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told reporters last month in a briefing. WATCH LIVE: Stunning new images from James Webb Space Telescope offer fuller picture of our universe Part of the image is light from not too long after the Big Bang, which was 13.8 billion years ago. The “deep field” image released at a White House event is filled with lots of stars, with massive galaxies in the foreground and faint and extremely distant galaxies peeking through here and there. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail. Image courtesy of NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI It also has a 3d model of Webb showing its location in our 3d solar system.The first image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. The WhereIsWebb interactive worked in tandem with the Deployment Explorer to expand in greater detail on Webb's schedule, current state, and current state details including speed and distance tracking the flight to L2, each step of its unprecedented deployment process, the cooldown to operational temperatures near absolute zero, and the major mirror and instrument commissioning steps leading to the release of Webb's first images. ![]() All of that rich and varied information is retained here for your in-depth exploration. Now, you can use it explore the entire process.Īnnotations: During deployment and commissioning, in near realtime, each current step was updated and annotated with status information, blog posts, press conferences, related images, articles, videos etc. 000 Explore Webb's Deployments & CommissioningĬlick the sequence of images above to explore each step from launch though Webb's first images.ĭuring Webb's launch, ~1,000,000 mile journey to L2, deployment, commissioning and through the release of its first images, this interactive tracked Webb's current state in realtime and mapped out the future steps.
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