JWST Images: 10 stunning images that show the beauty of the universe, from galaxies to nebulae

During its short lifetime, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) forever changed our understanding of the universe. It has gazed upon planets, stars, galaxies and black holes, and opened its eyes to a treasure trove of celestial delicacies. JWST may seem to have come out of nowhere, but the telescope was the result of the collaborative efforts of tens of thousands of scientists over many decades. One of those scientists, Maggie Adeline Pocock, is modest about her personal contributions, preferring instead to talk about the achievements of her telescope. “The detail that a telescope can get and the great resolution that you can get with a 6.5-meter mirror makes for great images,” she says.

In her new book, Webb’s Universe: Space Telescope Images Revealing the History of the UniverseAdeline Pocock, presenter night sky The Chancellor of the University of Leicester in the UK catalogs these images and details the science behind each impressive view, as well as a comprehensive insider’s look at how JWST’s technology was developed. We offer our views. The images span a vast range of distances, from the farthest black hole from us, which formed near the beginning of the universe, to Uranus and other planets in the universe’s backyard. For each object, JWST revealed something previously hidden from view, thanks to the unique spectrum of infrared light it can detect.

One of the phrases Adeline Pocock often uses to describe her and JWST’s work is “I trip the light fantastically.” This phrase comes from the poet John Milton’s description of a light and airy dance set to music. JWST’s maneuver through space can be thought of as a carefully orchestrated dance, but Adeline Pocock also explores how we can intimately feel the spectrum of light through which we can currently see the universe. , I love this phrase. We collect different information, different chemical reactions and different temperatures emit (different) radiation. And by putting all of this together, we can better understand the big picture. ”

Uranus

JWST often makes headlines for its discoveries about the farthest reaches of space from us, but it is also perfectly positioned to image the planets in our solar system, allowing us to see them in amazing detail. can. “This photo sums it up perfectly,” says Adeline Pocock. “This is a great photo of Uranus. Not many people know about Uranus’s rings, but all the outer planets have rings: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. We don’t often see them in such detail, but they are… Because we are looking at infrared energy.”

Carina Nebula

ring nebula

There’s still much that astronomers don’t know about how stars are born, and the answer lies in nebulae, vast regions of gas and dust that can span many times the distance of our solar system. Astronomers have been imaging these stellar nurseries for decades, but JWST will help us see what was previously invisible. The photo above shows the Carina Nebula and the Ring Nebula. “Not all visible light can pass through this dust and gas when viewed with an optical telescope,” says Adeline Pocock. “When you look through an infrared telescope, you suddenly see these nebulae in a completely different way. You see details you’ve never seen before.”

pillar of creation

One of the most iconic images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope was a magnified section of the Eagle Nebula called the Pillars of Creation, another star-forming region of gas and dust. But the image was first taken by astronomer John Charles Duncan in the 1920s, Adeline Pocock said. More than a century later, JWST has given us a different perspective on the three pillars. “This shows how our technology has progressed and progressed, and how each time we take an image with more detail or with a different wavelength of light, we get a different understanding. “It shows what’s going on,” she says.

Ophiuchus Rho cloud group

Apart from scientific insights, infrared observations of nearby stellar clouds like Rho Ophiuchus can be inspirational on an aesthetic level. “I love this image,” says Adeline Pocock. “To me, it looks like a really exotic bird.”

In the 1990s, astronomer Robert Williams pointed Hubble at a visible part of the sky and left it there for several days to gather light. The resulting images were filled with galaxies, many of them the youngest and most distant we know. “From there, we deduced that there were about 200 billion galaxies in the entire universe, which gave us a bit of a headache,” says Adeline Pocock.

Galaxy cluster SMACS 0723

JWST is keen to create its own versions of these so-called deep-field images, such as this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, which goes back much further than Hubble. “The universe is expanding, so as the universe expands, that means wavelengths that start as visible light move into infrared light. These galaxies have been around for a very long time, Because they took so long to reach us, observing galaxies in the infrared line of sight gives us different insights into what they were originally like.”

cartwheel galaxy

JWST can zoom in on distant galaxies as well as individual nearby galaxies, which may help us understand how our own Milky Way formed. “If you tyrannosaurus When you try to take a selfie, you can get a close-up of your nose or ears, but it’s difficult to capture your whole face because you can’t move the camera far enough,” says Adeline Pocock. Cartwheel galaxies are the result of the collision of two smaller galaxies, but they may also help us understand the fate of the Milky Way, which collides with the nearby Andromeda galaxy billions of years later.

RS Papis

One of the biggest mysteries in modern cosmology is the Hubble tension. This is a collision of values ​​as astronomers try to measure how fast the universe is expanding using different techniques. One of these is based on a special star called a Cepheid variable star, such as RS Papis, which blinks extremely regularly and was first mapped in detail using the Hubble telescope. Astronomers like Adeline Pocock say JWST will image them in greater detail, suggesting whether the tension is a problem with previous telescopes or that there is a more fundamental failure in our model of the universe. I hope this will help clarify what’s going on.

Galaxy cluster Abel 2744

Never before have we been able to observe the universe’s earliest supermassive black holes and their galaxies in such detail. Abel 2744, a galaxy cluster 4 billion light-years from Earth, also known as the Pandora galaxy cluster, contains at least one of these black holes. Adeline Pocock said JWST will be able to observe surrounding gas and dust, allowing us to understand how black holes form and work, and when combined with other observations such as X-ray telescopes, will provide a complete and detailed It is said that images can be obtained.

Barnard Galaxy, also known as NGC 6822

Adeline Pocock has spent much of her career designing equipment for space, so she knows better than anyone the incredible precision and engineering that went into the JWST. For example, focusing on small parts of the sky, even in star-dense areas, using something called a microshutter array, which is a small flap the size of a human hair that can block out unwanted light. You can. The field of stars above includes Barnard’s Star, one of Earth’s closest neighbors, which was recently discovered to have its own planet. JWST will continue its research in the future.

Webb’s Universe: Space Telescope Images Revealing the History of the Universe Written by Maggie Adeline Pocock is published by O’Mara Books