Ancient Galaxies revealed in the first images of James Webb Space Telescope
One of the most anticipated events of 2022 has come to pass, experts hypothesized that the images from the James Webb Space Telescope would change the way people would look at the universe and now that day has arrived.
US President Joe Biden and NASA revealed the images of ancient galaxies that were believed to be of more than 13 billion years ago. The JWST captured the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe so far. Its First Deep Field is galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, and it is teeming with thousands of galaxies, including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared. The galaxy cluster in question SMACS 0723, is where a massive group of galaxy clusters act as a magnifying glass for the objects behind them.
The image from JWST is estimated to be the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length, a tiny sliver of the vast universe. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying more distant galaxies, including some seen when the universe was less than a billion years old. This image was produced by the JWST’s near-infrared camera, and the deep field was created using a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours. Webb’s telescope managed to achieve infrared wavelengths surpassing Hubble telescope’s deepest fields which took weeks at the minimum. It is believed that this is not the full extent of Webb’s telescope, that it is capable of even longer exposures, thus revealing more about the vast and mysterious universe in turn.
NASA administration Bill Nelson said; “Webb's First Deep Field is not only the first full-color image from the James Webb Space Telescope, it’s the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant Universe, so far. This image covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length. It’s just a tiny sliver of the vast universe”. Furthermore, he praised all the crew who had a part in the success of Webb’s telescope; “This mission was made possible by human ingenuity – the incredible NASA Webb team and our international partners at the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. Webb is just the start of what we can accomplish in the future when we work together for the benefit of humanity”.
To elaborate more on the image, it is revealed by the administration that the light from all these galaxies took billions of years to reach us. We are looking back in time to within a billion years after the big bang when viewing the youngest galaxies in this field. Additionally, it was observed from JWST’s Near Infrared Spectrograph that 48 individual galaxies were observed at the same time. JWST’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph used Wide-Field Slitless Spectroscopy to capture spectra of all the objects in the entire field of view at once, and it was proved that galaxies do mirror themselves.
Finally, SMACS 0723, the galaxy cluster caught in the image can be viewed near the constellation Volans in the southern sky.
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