A new perspective on space
NASA’s long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope has produced its first, crystalclear images of the cosmos—and scientists are totally blown away. The new,
$10 billion space observatory is the most powerful ever built, more than 100 times more sensitive to light than its predecessor, the Hubble. Stationed about 1 million miles from Earth, it was created through the combined efforts of about 20,000 engineers, astronomers, technicians, and government officials from the U.S., Canada, and Europe over 30 years. The first images show newborn stars shining out from the multicolored clouds of interstellar dust where they were incubated; Stephan’s Quintet, a group of five galaxies so close together four will eventually merge; and a “deep field” cluster of galaxies as much as 13 billion light-years away, at the edge of space and time. “We’re looking for the first things to come out of the
Big Bang,” said John Mather, senior project scientist for the telescope. Every telescope acts as a kind of time machine because of the time it takes light to travel through the vacuum of space. With the Webb telescope, we can now see galaxies as they were not long after the formation of the universe in the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago. With its vast light- and data-gathering ability, Webb will also scrutinize exoplanets around other stars for signs of life. “The growth in our understanding of the universe will be as great as it was with the Hubble, and that is really saying something,” astronomer Alan Dressler, who was instrumental in the original planning for the telescope, tells The New York Times. “We’re in for a great adventure.”