NASA James Webb Space Telescope First Images

[cabfrank]

Mind-blowing indeed. Incomprehensible.

[JSumm]

Looking at scale and relativity in the universe is so hard for our mind to comprehend.

[RamZar]

L1527 and Protostar



The scale bar is labeled in astronomical units (AU), which is the average distance between Earth and the Sun, or 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).

[cabfrank]

[MacLaren]

Truly awe inspiring.



FB_IMG_1657740593914.jpg





Ok seriously, it's pretty incredible.

[JSumm]

These pictures coming back are amazing. I have read that this telescope with its infrared capabilities can see past dusty areas and zoom into to what was around 13 billion years ago. In a sense, we are travelling back in time.

I heard Neil deGrasse Tyson once describe this in a way that blew my mind. He said, if aliens were on a planet in a different solar system looking at Earth with an insanely strong telescope, like zoom into the ground strong, they would see Dinosaurs walking around on Earth. Meaning the light and images they are seeing have taken that long to get to their planet.

[cabfrank]

So whatever we/they are seeing isn't even there anymore. It's just...wow.

[RamZar]

Abell 2744 GLASS
Earliest Galaxies in the Universe

Two of the farthest galaxies seen to date are captured in these Webb Space Telescope pictures of the outer regions of the giant galaxy cluster Abell 2744. The galaxies are not inside the cluster, but many billions of light-years farther behind it. The galaxy labeled (1) existed only 450 million years after the big bang. The galaxy labeled (2) existed 350 million years after the big bang. Both are seen really close in time to the big bang which occurred 13.8 billion years ago. These galaxies are tiny compared to our Milky Way, being just a few percent of its size, even the unexpectedly elongated galaxy labeled (1).



The scale bar is labeled in arc seconds, which is a measure of angular distance on the sky. One arc second is equal to 1/3600 of one degree of arc. (The full Moon has an angular diameter of about 0.5 degrees.) The actual size of an object that covers one arc second on the sky depends on its distance from the telescope.

High Resolution: https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01GG7TDKQNQ ... MH9JB0.png

[RamZar]

It's not much to look at - just a little red blob with the rather quirky name of JADES-GS-z13-0.
But this faint smudge, imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope, is the "most distant galaxy" so far confirmed by gold-standard measurement.

We're looking at this collection of stars as it was a mere 325 million years after the Big Bang.
Put another way - if the Universe is 13.8 billion years old, it means we're observing JADES-GS-z13-0 when the cosmos was only 2% of its current age.

[Naperville]

Wasn't the "Big Bang" debunked in 2022? I don't know what replaced it, but that is what I thought that I had heard.

[RamZar]

Wasn't the "Big Bang" debunked in 2022? I don't know what replaced it, but that is what I thought that I had heard.

The alleged debunking of the Big Bang, based on the currently common infections of misinformation & disinformation, was itself debunked!

The James Webb Space Telescope never disproved the Big Bang. Here's how that falsehood spread. — The Big Bang theory is still on solid ground, despite pseudoscientific attempts to twist JWST's findings

[Naperville]

Wasn't the "Big Bang" debunked in 2022? I don't know what replaced it, but that is what I thought that I had heard.

The alleged debunking of the Big Bang, based on the currently common infections of misinformation & disinformation, was itself debunked!

The James Webb Space Telescope never disproved the Big Bang. Here's how that falsehood spread. — The Big Bang theory is still on solid ground, despite pseudoscientific attempts to twist JWST's findings

OK, so that explains a few things.

Thank you!

[RamZar]

NGC 346, shown here in this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a dynamic star cluster that lies within a nebula 200,000 light years away. Webb reveals the presence of many more building blocks than previously expected, not only for stars, but also planets, in the form of clouds packed with dust and hydrogen.

The plumes and arcs of gas in this image contains two types of hydrogen. The pink gas represents energized hydrogen, which is typically as hot as around 10,000 °C (approximately 18,000 °F) or more, while the more orange gas represents dense, molecular hydrogen, which is much colder at around -200 °C (approximately -300 °F) or less, and associated dust.

The colder gas provides an excellent environment for stars to form, and, as they do, they change the environment around them. The effect of this is seen in the various ridges throughout, which are created as the light of these young stars breaks down the dense clouds. The many pillars of glowing gas show the effects of this stellar erosion throughout the region.

This image of the star cluster NGC 346, captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), shows compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference.

The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as seen from below) is flipped relative to direction arrows on a map of the ground (as seen from above).

At the lower right is a scale bar labeled 50 light-years, 15 parsecs. The length of the scale bar is approximately one-fifth the total width of the image. Below the image is a color key showing which NIRCam filters were used to create the image and which visible-light color is assigned to each filter. From left to right, NIRCam filters are: F200W is blue; F277W is green; F335M is orange; and F444W is red.

Credits

SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, CSA, Olivia C. Jones (UK ATC), Guido De Marchi (ESTEC), Margaret Meixner (USRA)
IMAGE PROCESSING: Alyssa Pagan (STScI), Nolan Habel (USRA), Laura Lenkić (USRA), Laurie E. U. Chu (NASA Ames)

[Naperville]

These pictures coming back are amazing. I have read that this telescope with its infrared capabilities can see past dusty areas and zoom into to what was around 13 billion years ago. In a sense, we are travelling back in time.

I heard Neil deGrasse Tyson once describe this in a way that blew my mind. He said, if aliens were on a planet in a different solar system looking at Earth with an insanely strong telescope, like zoom into the ground strong, they would see Dinosaurs walking around on Earth. Meaning the light and images they are seeing have taken that long to get to their planet.

Unless...the aliens had one of those Warp Factor 10 Telescopes that saw 10x faster than the speed of light.

Then what?

[cabfrank]

They'd still be looking into the past, just not as far into it. These distances are hard to even imagine.

[RamZar]

James Webb Space Telescope -- Ringed World With New Image of Uranus


This zoomed-in image of Uranus, captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) Feb. 6, 2023, reveals stunning views of the planet’s rings. The planet displays a blue hue in this representative-color image, made by combining data from two filters (F140M, F300M) at 1.4 and 3.0 microns, which are shown here as blue and orange, respectively
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. Image processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)


This wider view of the Uranian system with Webb’s NIRCam instrument features the planet Uranus as well as six of its 27 known moons (most of which are too small and faint to be seen in this short exposure). A handful of background objects, including many galaxies, are also seen.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. Image processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)

[RamZar]

This image of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, captured by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), shows compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference.

The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as seen from below) is flipped relative to direction arrows on a map of the ground (as seen from above).

The scale bar is labeled in light-years, which is the distance that light travels in one Earth-year. (It takes 0.25 years for light to travel a distance equal to the length of the scale bar.) One light-year is equal to about 5.88 trillion miles or 9.46 trillion kilometers. The field of view shown in this image is approximately 10 light-years across.

This image shows invisible mid-infrared wavelengths of light that have been translated into visible-light colors. The color key shows which MIRI filters were used when collecting the light. The color of each filter name is the visible light color used to represent the infrared light that passes through that filter.

Credits

IMAGE: NASA, ESA, CSA, Danny Milisavljevic (Purdue University), Tea Temim (Princeton University), Ilse De Looze (UGent)
IMAGE PROCESSING: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

[DansGearAddiction]

In addition to the sheer beauty of these images, for me, the most profound thing is that we are effectively looking back in time.

We are looking back in time at something that may no longer even exist. We are looking back at something more powerful than any of us can comprehend, over a time line that none of us can comprehend.

And each time we see new images, we are looking at life and death occurring simultaneously -- the birth and death of stars, supernovas, the creation and destruction of planets. We may be looking at something which may contain a place that someone or something may call, or had previously called home, along with their collective history. We are getting answers, but also getting new questions. We are getting questions that we will never be able to answer, and answers that we won't be able to understand for time to come.

Even when we talk about something "young", like the Pillars of Creation, we are still looking at something that happened in the early stages of the Bronze Age -- 2,500 years before the Great Pyramids in Giza were built, back when humanity was still in an agrarian age.

When we look at other images, like the Galaxy Field SMACS 0723 (4.6 billion light years away) on the first page, we are looking at something that literally pre-dates the Earth.

On a side note, if you ever want to feel particularly small, I'd highly recommend this: If the moon was 1 pixel - it scales down the solar system in a way that each pixel represents the size of the moon to give you a sense of scale of how massive the solar system (and how small we truly are)

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

I feel that as time goes on, this telescope is going to be a gift that keeps giving -- Hubble still is nearly 33 years later.

[RamZar]

Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken on February 14, 1990, by the Voyager 1 space probe from a distance of about 3.7 billion miles.

https://youtu.be/tgQ1PtkZvGU


The original: Just minutes after taking the image, Voyager powered down its camera system


New remastered version 2020: Voyager pictured Earth as "a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam"


Cassini captured its own version in 2013, with Saturn in the foreground

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is still going even with fewer gyroscopes and no repair/upgrade missions. About 10 years ago the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) gave NASA two spy satellite telescopes with primary mirrors of nearly 8 feet wide (2.4 meters), rivaling HST, and also carrying secondary mirror to enhance image sharpness. These have been stripped of any secret technology. The telescopes have a much wider field of view than HST due to its shorter focal length, allowing it to observe about 100 times the area at any given time as HST can. Possible space telescopes depending on budgets.

[RamZar]

I feel that as time goes on, this telescope is going to be a gift that keeps giving -- Hubble still is nearly 33 years later.

In this past Sunday’s 60 Minutes they mentioned that the JWST could keep going for another 25 years! It’s a very informative episode of 60 Minutes where experts explain images.

https://youtu.be/dC1-qgR7YO0