James Webb Telescope

On Monday, the first image from the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope will be presented to the public.

The James Webb telescope’s ability to see far into the infrared spectrum will afford scientists a clearer view into the deep cosmos than has been possible before. As a result, the telescope requires a massive sun shield to protect against solar radiation. The mirrors, cameras and other instruments that need to be kept ultracold for infrared astronomy are protected from the sun’s radiation by a five-layered, tennis-court-sized sun shield. The Webb can obtain an “ultra deep field” image by focusing on one dark patch of space for a protracted period and gathering the faint light that hits the mirrors. Regardless of whatever wow factor is generated by the new images, the significant fact is that the Webb works. “The capabilities of Webb are truly out of this world.”

They'll mark the beginning of the next era in astronomy as Webb – the largest space telescope ever built – offers scientific data that will help answer ...

After July 12, the James Webb Space Telescope will start working full time on its science mission. On July 12, NASA plans to release a suite of teaser observations that illustrate Webb’s capabilities. As of June 15, 2022, all of Webb’s instruments are on and have taken their first images. Once NIRCam cooled to minus 280 F, it was cold enough to start detecting light reflecting off of Webb’s mirror segments and produce the telescope’s first images. The extremely cold temperatures allow MIRI to be incredibly sensitive to light in the mid-infrared range which can pass through dust more easily. The NIRCam team was ecstatic when the first light image arrived. The first task during Webb’s monthlong journey to its final location in orbit was to unfold the telescope. One of the first things my colleagues at NASA noticed was that the telescope had more remaining fuel onboard than predicted to make future adjustments to its orbit. NASA is scheduled to release some of the very first images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope on July 12, 2022. Future steps will measure exactly where the slits are pointing and check that multiple targets can be observed simultaneously. But before it could do that, NIRCam had to help align the 18 individual segments of Webb’s mirror. But it has taken nearly eight months of travel, setup, testing and calibration to make sure this most valuable of telescopes is ready for prime time.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb's First Deep Field, ...

Decades in the making, the first image from NASA's $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope was released Monday afternoon by President Joe Biden.

Webb uses a massive, 21-foot primary mirror made up of hexagonal tiles to study the cosmos. Its main capability is infrared observation, meaning it will be able to peer through obstacles like dust clouds to see the early phases of star formation. This is the deepest view of the cosmos ever captured. “It’s not an image. It's also an astounding 100 times more powerful than the famed but aging Hubble Space Telescope, which is now 32 years old. "For astronomy and space exploration."

This video puts into perspective just how powerful the James Webb Space Telescope is by comparing its last photo to the same view from Earth.

NASA is set to release the first full-color photos captured by the James Webb Space Telescope this week. Ethan Gone, a self-described amateur astrophotographer who goes by the name k2qogir on Youtube, puts the photo in a more easily digestible perspective that truly showcases the incredible distance that James Webb is able to image. In short, what Webb imaged with its guidance camera is just one astronomically tiny portion of the sky that looks nearly empty to those on Earth, yet through not even its main camera it was able to see a huge number of stars and galaxies.

President Joe Biden on Monday will reveal the first image from NASA's new space telescope — the deepest view of the cosmos ever captured.

That shot is likely to be be filled with lots of stars, with massive galaxies in the foreground distorting the light of the objects behind, telescoping them and making faint and extremely distant galaxies visible. It found the light wave signature of an extremely bright galaxy in 2016. That image will be followed Tuesday by the release of four more galactic beauty shots from the telescope’s initial outward gazes. “It’s not an image. Part of the image will be of light from not too long after the Big Bang. The first image from the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope is going to show the farthest humanity has ever seen in both time and distance, closer to the dawn of the universe and the edge of the cosmos.

The pictures show elements of the universe as they were 13bn years ago, reshaping our understanding of the cosmos.

The system has so far “performed flawlessly”, according to Marcia Rieke, professor of astronomy at University of Arizona. Nasa said Webb has five initial cosmic targets for observation, including the Carina nebula, a sort of celestial nursery where stars form. “Webb is bigger than Hubble so that it can see fainter galaxies that are further away.” “We are looking back more than 13 billion years,” he said, adding that more images to be released by the space agency will reach back further, to around 13.5 billion years, close to the estimated start point of the universe itself. “We are going back almost to the beginning,” he said. Joe Biden, who unveiled the image at a White House event, called the moment “historic” and said it provides “a new window into the history of our universe”.

The first science image from the James Webb Space Telescope, presented by US president Joe Biden on 11 July, is the deepest and highest-resolution infrared ...

This first image is a tantalising hint of what’s to come from JWST, in the form of both more pictures and detailed observations of the universe. This first image is a region of space called SMACS 0723, which contains what astronomers call a gravitational lens. JWST launched from French Guiana at the end of 2021 and arrived in its final orbit around the sun in early 2022.

Academics have long petitioned Nasa to rename the space telescope, given historical accusations linking Webb to anti-LGBT policies.

“The observatory will produce amazing science and gorgeous images, certainly the equal of anything Hubble has done,” Plait tweeted. “A lot of astronomers are very unhappy the observatory is named after him,” wrote the American astronomer Phil Plait in his Bad Astronomy newsletter. The telescope’s name has been criticised by many scientists amid allegations that Webb was linked to persecution of LGBTQ+ people in the 1950s and 1960s.

Image from world's largest and most powerful space telescope shows 'galaxies once invisible to us', NASA says.

NASA is collaborating on Webb with the European and Canadian space agencies. The collection also includes two very different sets of galaxy clusters. It found the light wave signature of an extremely bright galaxy in 2016. “And it’s a view that we’ve never seen before.” “Light from other worlds, orbiting stars far beyond our own,” Biden said. Previewed by@POTUSon July 11, it shows galaxies once invisible to us.

The months-long process of preparing NASA's James Webb Space Telescope for science is now complete. All of the seventeen ways or 'modes' to operate Webb's ...

Observers are going to be very pleased with the data they receive, and I am extremely happy with how 20 years of work by my team are now realized in amazing performance,” said Marcia Rieke, principal investigator for the NIRCam instrument and regents professor of astronomy, University of Arizona. In addition to capturing detailed imagery of the universe, NIRCam is the observatory’s main wavefront sensor that is used to fine-tune the telescope’s optics. Each of Webb’s four scientific instruments has multiple modes of operation, utilizing customized lenses, filters, prisms, and specialized machinery that needed to be individually tested, calibrated, and ultimately verified in their operational configuration in space before beginning to capture precise scientific observations of the universe.

The James Webb image shows tiny structures of distant galaxies that have never been seen before, such as star clusters and diffuse features.

A successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, its mission is to solve mysteries in the solar system, look to distant worlds around other stars and probe the origins of our universe. (Literally, capturing it took less than a day!) This is Webb’s first image released as we begin to#UnfoldTheUniverse: https://t.co/tlougFWg8B pic.twitter.com/Y7ebmQwT7j The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying more distant galaxies behind it.

They include an incredibly deep image of the universe and the atmosphere of an exoplanet.

Driving the news: President Biden is expected to unveil the first full-color photo on Monday at 5pm ET, and NASA will release the rest of the images on Tuesday at 10:30am ET. - The first batch will reveal the fine details of star formation, an exoplanet's atmosphere, an incredibly deep image of the universe, a cluster of galaxies and more, according to NASA. NASA is set to release its first full-color scientific images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope Monday and Tuesday.

President Joe Biden will share the first image from the James Webb Space Telescope on Monday at the White House at 5 p.m. ET. The rest of Webb's first ...

These will be the first of many images to come from Webb, the most powerful telescope ever launched into space. "Webb can see backwards in time just after the big bang by looking for galaxies that are so far away, the light has taken many billions of years to get from those galaxies to ourselves," said Jonathan Gardner, Webb deputy senior project scientist at NASA, during a recent news conference. Webb's study of the giant gas planet WASP-96b will be the first full-color spectrum of an exoplanet. The space telescope's view of Stephan's Quintet will reveal the way galaxies interact with one another. Called gravitational lensing, this will create Webb's first deep field view of incredibly old and distant, faint galaxies. Located 7,600 light-years away, the Carina Nebula is a stellar nursery, where stars are born.

Analysis: astronomers are hoping future images will show 'cosmic dawn', the forming of the first galaxies 13.5bn years ago.

For researchers, the waves of relief are now waves of excitement: now the real work begins. Webb will do more than look back to the early stirrings of the universe. Against the odds, the observatory made it to the launch pad, reached its destination unscathed, and appears to be operating beautifully. On Tuesday, Nasa will release more images to give a flavour of what the telescope can do. Nasa’s Hubble defined our view of the heavens for the past 30 years, and now Webb, its successor, is poised to shape our understanding for many decades to come. Webb’s impressive performance comes from its remote position in space, a spot 1m miles from Earth called the second Lagrange point, or L2, its large mirror, and the extreme sensitivity of its infrared instruments.

The James Webb telescope will look at the Universe in the infrared, while Hubble studies it primarily at ultraviolet wavelengths, according to NASA.

The first image taken by the Webb telescope shows crystal-clear picture of deep space and was presented in full colour. "Webb often gets called the replacement for Hubble, but we prefer to call it a successor. This is a new era in Astronomy and we are lucky to be witnessing it unfold :)— Astrophile (@nirashanpradhan) pic.twitter.com/s8klI32MGh July 12, 2022

The James Webb Space Telescope's first images will be shared on Tuesday, including a nebula where stars are born, the color spectrum of an exoplanet and the ...

The space telescope's view of Stephan's Quintet will reveal the way galaxies interact with one another. Webb's study of the giant gas planet WASP-96b will be the first full-color spectrum of an exoplanet. The image, taken by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera, is composed of images taken at different wavelengths of light over a collective 12.5 hours. Located 7,600 light-years away, the Carina Nebula is a stellar nursery, where stars are born. The spectrum will include different wavelengths of light that could reveal new information about the planet, such as whether it has an atmosphere. Called gravitational lensing, this created Webb's first deep field view that includes incredibly old and faint galaxies.

There are more scenes of the cosmos coming on Tuesday morning from the largest space observatory ever built.

Adam Riess, a Nobel-Prize winning cosmologist at the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University, said the new Webb image had detected objects a trillionth the brightness of the star Vega, a astronomical standard for the magnitude of a star. The cluster’s enormous gravitation field acts as a lens, warping and magnifying the light from galaxies behind it that would otherwise be too faint and faraway to see. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for space science, described this image as the deepest view yet into the past of our cosmos. Webb is expected to smash that record, again and again starting with this image of SMACS 0723. In the first Webb image released by President Biden and NASA yesterday, some of the distant galaxies are warped into curves. Such a spectrum is the sort of detail that could reveal what is in that world’s atmosphere. For the astronomers, engineers and officials watching on Earth, the deployment was a tense time. It includes a massive cluster of galaxies about 4 billion light-years from here that astronomers use as a kind of cosmic telescope. Last week, NASA released another picture taken by the telescope’s fine guidance sensor, a camera meant just to lock on surrounding stars for reference and keep the spacecraft’s science instruments pointed at exactly the right place. In a brief event at the White House on Monday, President Biden and NASA introduced Webb’s first scientific image, which goes by the name of SMACS 0723. It is a patch of sky visible from the Southern Hemisphere on Earth and often visited by Hubble and other telescopes in search of the deep past. Starting in the late morning, the agency will reveal a series of images from the largest and most powerful space observatory ever launched.

Thanks to the telescope's deep and sharp infrared images, Earthlings are getting a more detailed look at distant galaxies than was ever possible.

You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic.

The first full-color images from NASA's James Webb telescope have been released, giving us the deepest look into the universe and how the first galaxies ...

Biden to release first-full color image from James Webb telescope A test image taken by the James Webb Telescope offers a preview of what's to come ahead of the release of the first full-color images. - Biden to release first-full color image from James Webb telescope