The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), jointly operated by NASA, Canada’s CSA and the European Space Agency ESA, has successfully entered service. The images and accompanying data released on July 12 provide a first glimpse of the new telescope’s full capabilities and represent a major advance in humanity’s ability to understand the universe and our place in it.
The images are the result of an amazing scientific achievement. Hundreds of commands sent to the telescope from ground control since launch on December 25 have been executed flawlessly. Thousands of researchers, scientists and engineers in the United States, Canada, Europe and elsewhere around the world have worked tirelessly to analyze and optimize the spacecraft’s in-orbit performance. As a result, the data obtained has already far exceeded the potential of previous space telescopes.
The event also has great social significance. Astronomers and the public have been waiting for the first images from the space telescope for over a decade. The telescope builds on the achievements of other space observatories such as Chandra, Spitzer and most notably Hubble, which have produced groundbreaking scientific achievements that have fascinated and inspired interested observers around the world.
Millions of people watched the live broadcast of the images, and millions more read reports, watched videos, shared on social media, and shared with colleagues and friends what the JWST has observed so far. After years of delays and a near-cancellation in 2011 by the culturally backward American government (the $10 billion the telescope cost could have been spent on another aircraft carrier), the JWST has successfully slotted into the constellation of space telescopes and this further developed.
The telescope’s first operational image, called Webb’s First Deep Field, shows the galaxy cluster (cluster) SMACS 0723. It took light from the cluster 4.6 billion years to reach Earth. The image provides a unique look at the galaxies in this cluster from that period in cosmic history. The galaxy cluster is so massive that it also acts as a lens. Its gravity is so strong that light from more distant galaxies is focused and amplified. The JWST was able to capture light from a galaxy that had traveled 13.1 billion years, being emitted just 700 million years after the Big Bang.
The most striking aspect of the image, however, is the improvement in resolution of this “deep field” compared to the earlier Hubble images. A particularly important aspect in the development of the JWST was a primary mirror with a diameter of 6.5 meters, which has a light-gathering area six times larger than that of the Hubble telescope. This enables the JWST to capture internal structural details of galaxies that Hubble cannot capture, such as: B. Star clusters and other diffuse features.
Also of note is that the JWST’s near-infrared (NIRCam) camera was able to gather the necessary data to image SMACS 0723 in just 12.5 hours. The Hubble telescope, on the other hand, needed several weeks to collect comparable but less resolved data.
The JWST will be able to look even further into the past. While the galaxy GN-z11 is the most distant object Hubble has observed – the light has traveled 13.4 billion years before it was measured – the new telescope is expected to exceed this milestone in the coming months. JWST primarily observes wavelengths in the infrared (while Hubble works in the visible) and is therefore designed to observe light that has traveled even longer.
Another object recorded with the NIRCam is the Carina Nebula. Located about 7,600 light-years from Earth, it is an interesting object for studying star and planet formation. In particular, the JWST has imaged the nebula’s so-called “cosmic cliffs,” which look like a series of mountains and valleys but are actually the rim of a colossal cavity formed by stars that erupted intensely in the first few years of their formation emitted ultraviolet light.
While previous observations of this region have shown star formation, none have penetrated the gas and dust to the extent that JWST can now at the current resolution. The observations were also aided by the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which revealed previously suspected but previously unseen regions of star formation.
The astronomers also used NIRCam and MIRI to observe Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies first observed in 1877. While the left-most galaxy is not a true member of the cluster (it is 40 million light-years from Earth, and the other four are 290 million light-years from Earth), the other four are gravitationally bound and a very well-studied one Group showing how galaxies can be torn apart when interacting with each other.
The JWST has acquired new data from these galaxies, including clusters of young stars and regions of star formation triggered by mutual interactions. The telescope also imaged a shock wave produced as the cluster traversed galaxy NGC 7318B, and outflows produced by the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy NGC 7319. The high resolution, made possible by the size of the JWST, also provided more detail on the hundreds of galaxies in the background, which is actually another deep field.
The latest image released to demonstrate the capabilities of NIRCam and MIRI shows the Southern Ring Nebula, made up of a binary star system some 2,500 light-years away. In it, one of the stars lost a large part of its mass at the end of its life due to regular gas and dust ejections. As the stars spun, they threw the ejected material into a complex web of envelopes. The distance of the individual shells from the binary pair and their molecular composition sheds light on the system’s history over thousands of years, in a similar way to studying geological epochs through rock strata on Earth, allowing researchers to better understand the evolution of such star systems.
NASA has also released data from the WASP-96 exoplanet system’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS). During a 6.4-hour observing period, the instrument watched as a gas giant in this system, half the mass and 1.2 times the diameter of Jupiter, passed in front of its parent star. It confirmed previous evidence of water in the atmosphere of a planet 1,150 light-years away, and provided evidence of haze and clouds that had not previously been detected.
The JWST is also capable of imaging objects in our own solar system. Part of the telescope’s calibrations was to image Jupiter to map objects moving rapidly through the telescope’s field of view. The fine-tuning sensor proved fully functional to ensure such objects could be successfully tracked and imaged, and as a bonus, the NIRCam showed its ability to simultaneously image both the bright planet and its less visible rings and moons.
Taken together, these first images demonstrate that the JWST is capable of achieving the scientific goals it was built for: delving deeper into cosmic history and viewing complex astronomical phenomena with greater clarity than ever before. In addition, the final commissioning and calibration results show that the telescope significantly exceeds pre-launch specifications in virtually every operating range. As stated in the document “JWST Science Performance from Commissioning”, “The scientific performance of JWST is better than expected in almost all areas.”
One of the most important improvements is the life expectancy of the telescope. To maintain its orbit at Lagrange point 2 (1.5 million kilometers from Earth), it will consume a finite supply of fuel. Initial estimates were that the JWST would have enough fuel for 10.5 years. The final calculations show that the launch and entry into orbit went so smoothly that the spacecraft could continue observing for at least 20 years.
Of course, what hampered the release of the images and the beginning of the telescope’s scientific operations was the intervention of the Biden government, which released the deep-field image of SMACS 0723 a day early. Vice President Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, said the JWST will be “for the benefit of mankind.” Biden himself, who is effectively waging a war against Russia that could plunge the planet into nuclear annihilation, delivered a nationalist note when he declared the telescope was for “America and all mankind.”
But Biden and Harris’ hypocrisy does not belittle the immense scientific and cultural achievement of the James Webb Space Telescope. It ultimately demonstrates societal progress and shows what can be achieved when the collective energy of humanity serves societal interests, in this case a deeper understanding of nature and the interaction between humans and nature. With this same understanding, the world population is increasingly looking at social issues. This inevitably leads them to recognize the need to sweep away Biden and the capitalist socio-economic system that he and his ilk represent worldwide, and to replace them with a new and higher social order.