The James Webb Telescope Images Explained

Live Science

The most powerful telescope in history.  The James Webb Space Telescope's "jewel-filled" photos are stunning.

Transcript

00:00From the birthing places of baby stars, to a dying star's dramatic death rose, from

00:05an image of five galaxies locked in an endless cosmic ballet, to a view of the cosmos that's

00:11so deep it takes us back to the very beginnings of galaxies themselves.

00:16The James Webb Space Telescope's first ever images are here, and they're absolutely mind-melting.

00:22The five new full-colour photos, released by NASA this week as test images of the brand

00:32new James Webb Space Telescope, show our universe in unprecedented, breathtaking detail.

00:39NASA has said they're only the beginning.

00:42The $10 billion telescope, designed as a replacement to the Hubble Space Telescope, is 100 times

00:48more powerful than its predecessor, and able to take highly detailed snapshots of our universe

00:54in a matter of days.

00:56The telescope was launched into space on Christmas Day, and spent six months calibrating its instruments

01:02and unfurling its 21-foot-wide gold-plated primary mirror.

01:08Since coming online, the James Webb has been taking all kinds of test images in preparation

01:14for its planned two decades of service studying our cosmos.

01:19NASA has released five of those test images this week, all specially chosen to show how

01:24the telescope can help astronomers discover more about our cosmos.

01:30First on the list, is Stefan's Quintet, a group of five tightly bound galaxies, located

01:37290 million light-years away.

01:40Four of these galaxies are constantly circling around each other, locked in a cosmic dance

01:46of repeated close encounters.

01:48Scientists hope that by studying this dancing quintet, they could gain some insights into dark

01:55matter, the mysterious substance believed to make up most of the universe's matter.

02:00Next, is this image of the Carina Nebula, a dust and gas cloud 7600 light-years from Earth,

02:10and one of the brightest and most active star-forming regions ever discovered.

02:15It is home to many stars much larger than our sun, making it an attractive place to look for clues

02:21into the beginnings of our solar system, as well as its dramatic finale.

02:26On the subject of dying stars, the third image in NASA's teaser is the Southern Ring Nebula,

02:33also known as the 8-burst for its figure 8 appearance. Positioned around 2000 light-years from Earth,

02:39the nebula is an expanding cloud of gas and dust spewed out by the death throes of a red dwarf star.

02:47As the nebula's dust particles are particularly rich in heavy elements such as carbon, these remnants

02:53could one day go on to form new stars and planets, giving us a fascinating peek into the cosmic cycle

03:00of death and rebirth. The fourth snapshot wasn't so much an image, but the first full colour spectrum

03:08of WASP-96b, a giant mostly gaseous exoplanet that's half the mass of Jupiter and is located nearly 1150

03:18light-years from Earth. First discovered in 2014, WASP-96b is so close to its sun that a single orbit

03:25takes just 3.4 Earth days. By studying the way light is absorbed and re-emitted by this planet's atmosphere,

03:32the Webb was able to detect water vapour. If scientists can spot molecules like methane or

03:38carbon dioxide on other planets, they could use it as a way to hunt for life beyond our solar system.

03:45And we've saved the best till last. This image, called the Webb's first deep field, shows a cluster

03:51of galaxies with a combined gravity that is so strong they act as a gigantic magnifying lens,

03:57warping and concentrating distant starlight in an effect called gravitational lensing.

04:03This doesn't just enable us to see deeper into the universe, but because light travels at a fixed

04:08speed allows us to detect older light emitted further back in the universe past, an optical time

04:14machine through which we can glimpse the faintest glimmerings of starlight from the first ever galaxies.

04:20Now, if none of this has melted your brain so far, every light source in this image that doesn't have

04:26the characteristic diffraction spikes of a star is a galaxy, and each galaxy here contains billions of

04:31stars and trillions of worlds. All of this is contained within an image that is just the tiniest slice of

04:37sky, the equivalent of holding a sand grain up at arm's length. And for all the unprecedented and

04:44staggering depth in this image, it took the James Webb just 12 and a half hours to capture it.

04:51And these images are just the beginning. Now that the telescope is in operation, scientists from all

04:55over the world will be using it to explore space like it has never been explored before. We don't

05:01know yet what the James Webb Space Telescope will teach us, but one thing we do know for certain is

05:06that our understanding of our universe is about to be changed forever.

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