Scientists marvel at Webb photos - and imagine future research

Wearing a nebula-patterned skirt and James Webb Space Telescope earrings, Camille Calibeo looked around the auditorium in the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and saw people who had worked for years, for longer than she has been alive, to make the day a reality.

On Tuesday, the 25-year-old, known as the Galactic Gal to her 339,000 followers on TikTok, watched the scientists, some in tears, as a slide show revealed the first photo from the Webb telescope – – a cluster of galaxies in a distant patch of space, approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length – – to the last of the Carina Nebula, a cloud of gas and dust that is the birthplace and graveyard of stars.

“On one hand, I feel really insignificant, just to see that deep field was a single grain of sand and now we have the entire sky to look at,” she told The Washington Post on Tuesday. “On the other hand, I feel powerful. Powerful and important and beautiful. Because the chances of us living and existing as we do now are essentially zero.”

Decades in the making, the photos – – including an exploded star, the field of galaxies and an alien planet – – delighted those in the astronomical community who have waited for this moment, from space enthusiasts to scientists whose careers will be forever shaped by today. Despite constant delays, a ballooning budget and a number of other challenges that had become “a running joke,” according to scientists, the Webb telescope has traveled nearly a million miles for the past six months, sending back images that no one had ever seen before.

Finally seeing unforgettable scenes from the cosmos during the NASA presentation on Tuesday, many were emotional, including those involved in the project over the years.

Jane Rigby, a NASA astrophysicist and operations project scientist for the Webb telescope, recalled the moment she initially saw images of a standard star from the telescope, the first time she realized how well the observatory operated, she said.

“I went and had an ugly cry,” she told reporters, “because it works.”

Some compared the global excitement to the new images from the Webb telescope to that of the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope, its predecessor that first captured astronomical objects, including two previously unknown moons of Pluto, and pinned down the age of the universe.

Sarafina El-Badry Nance, an astrophysics Ph.D. student at the University of California at Berkley, would look back at the photos from Hubble’s website whenever she struggled with physics and math in school to remind herself what she was studying. As the 29-year-old watched the clearer, higher-resolution photos from Webb broadcast by NASA from the edge of her living room couch with her partner, Taylor, also a space enthusiast, she said she saw a future of discoveries.

“As astronomers and humans who look to the night sky and try to get some sort of perspective, to try to understand our existence in the cosmos, these images allow us to really gain that perspective in a beautiful way,” she said, her voice shaking with excitement.

She posted her reactions, jaw drops and all, on Twitter for her 135,000 followers as NASA shared each image that mapped the cycle of life and death in space.

“Oh my god it’s like Christmas morning,” she wrote.

As she peered at the image of the Southern Ring Nebula, a dying star sending rings of gas and dust out into space, Nance saw more and more details come into view, and she imagined her future. Nance, who studies supernovas, looks forward to the Webb telescope sharing new images of nebulas and providing more potential data she will research during her career.

“That’s why I’m studying and doing the research to really try to understand those beautiful, exotic features of the cosmos,” she said. “Hubble at the time I thought was the best of the best, and to have this is just the best gift I could imagine.”

Scientists have already applied to use the data gathered for research – – and others say they will be applying in the next round, including Nance. In a broadcast Tuesday, NASA researchers encouraged scientists to think ambitiously about research that could stem from Webb’s findings.

Like Hubble, the discoveries of the Webb telescope could propel not just science but a global fascination with space.

After she immigrated from Iraq as a teenager, Diana Alsindy realized her love of science. She went on to study chemical engineering at the University of California at San Diego, and intern at NASA, where she first encountered the telescope as it was still being built.

“It seemed unattainable with the delays and the challenges that seemed surreal,” she said.

The telescope – – that some lawmakers had considered canceling at one point – – had a fraught path to make it nearly 1 million miles away. In fact, NASA calculated there were 344 potential ways the $10 billion telescope, the largest space observatory ever built, could fail. Originally planned to launch in 2010 and cost $1 billion, it was sent up on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana in December 2021, years behind schedule and billions over budget.

But on Tuesday morning, Alsindy turned on her television to the first public signs of success – – an inspiring moment for the now 28-year-old engineer for Blue Origin.

“Oh my God,” Alsindy said in a video on her Instagram as the image of the planetary nebula appeared on her screen. She shared the developments of the day in Arabic and English with her 121,000 followers. “There’s no way this is real. Wow.”

Alsindy said in an interview with The Post that she expects Webb’s images shared through social media will make science more accessible and interesting to many, including those like her who do not initially have the opportunity to study space.

“I didn’t really grow up to know what space is or wanting to be an astronaut,” she said. “We were kind of in survival mode . . . So what it means to me to showcase the science in a fun, accessible manner in English and Arabic, it’s great because you are inspiring the next generation.”

“It’s such a phenomenal time to be alive,” she added.