The James Webb Telescope: What do scientists hope to learn?
THE James Webb Space Telescope's first images aren’t just breathtaking – they contain a wealth of scientific insights and clues that researchers are eager to pursue. Here are some of the things scientists hope to learn. Into the deep
Webb’s first image, released on Monday, delivered the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe, “Webb's First Deep Field”.
The white circles and ellipses are from the galaxy cluster in the foreground called SMACS 0723, as it appeared more than 4.6 billion years ago – roughly when our sun formed too. The reddish arcs are from light from ancient galaxies that has travelled more than 13 billion years.
Nasa astrophysicist Jane Rigby, said the image could teach us more about mysterious dark matter, thought to comprise 85% of matter in the universe.
The hunt planets
for habitable
Webb captured the signature of water, along with previously undetected evidence of clouds and haze, in the atmosphere surrounding a hot, puffy gas giant planet called WASP-96 b that orbits a distant star like our sun.
But what really excites astronomers is the prospect of pointing Webb at smaller, rocky worlds, like our own Earth, to search for atmospheres and bodies of liquid water that could support life.
Death of a star
Webb’s cameras captured a stellar graveyard, in the Southern Ring Nebula, revealing the dim, dying star at its centre in clear detail for the first time, and showing it is cloaked in dust.
Astronomers will use Webb to delve deeper into specifics about “planetary nebulae” like these, which spew clouds of gas and dust.
The nebulae will eventually also lead to rebirth. The gas and cloud ejection stops after some tens of thousands of years, and once the material is scattered in space, new stars can form.
A cosmic dance
Stephan’s Quintet, a grouping of five galaxies, is in the constellation Pegasus. Webb was able to pierce through the clouds of dust and gas at the centre of the galaxy to glean new insights, such as the velocity and composition of outflows of gas near its supermassive black hole.
Four of the galaxies are close together and locked in a “cosmic dance” of repeated close encounters.
By studying it, “you learn how the galaxies collide and merge,” said cosmologist John Mather, adding our own Milky Way was probably assembled out of 1 000 smaller galaxies. Understanding the black hole better will also give us greater insights into Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.