He James Webb Space Telescope came to change the way we understand the universe. With barely two years of activity, the observatory in which four of the world’s main space agencies participated, and at least 10 private sector companies, already has an impressive look at the depths of the cosmos.
Driven by the POTthe European Space Agency (THAT), Japan’s space agency (JAXA) and with the participation of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the James Webb was launched on December 25, 2021 and is 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, exactly at the point called Lagrange 2.
It has a powerful 6.5 meter mirror. The larger the mirror, the greater the distance that can be seen with the telescope. In addition, this supermirror is made up of 18 pieces of gold-coated beryllium, each 132 centimeters in diameter.
This is how it has managed to capture impressive events within our Solar System, within our Milky Way and far beyond the galaxy in which we live.
The five best photos of the James Webb Space Telescope
Northern lights and storms on Jupiter
Just in August, the James Webb took images of Jupiter that show new details of the auroras and storm systems.
On both Earth and Jupiter, auroras occur when charged particles from the sun interact with the magnetic field, known as the magnetosphere, that surrounds a planet. Jupiter’s magnetic field is about 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s.
Stars in the Pillars of Creation.
The wonderful Pillars of Creation, imposing columns of gas and dust where stars are born, was captured in much more detail by James Webb. The epic stellar nursery is located within the immense Eagle Nebula, a cloud of dust and gas located 6,500 light years away.
Hubble also captured images of the famous nursery in 1995. And comparing the two images side by side, Webb’s camera penetrates through the solid plumes of cosmic dust, revealing hundreds of stars that Hubble couldn’t see.
Ignored galaxies
According to a review of Business Insider, one of the first images shared by NASA from the James Webb was a “deep field” one, a long-exposure observation of a region of the sky that allows the telescope to capture light from extremely faint and distant objects. According to NASA, the image was captured in less than a day.
When presenting the image in July, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson mentioned that if you had a grain of sand within your arm’s length, that would represent the universe particle you see in this image.
James Webb sees 2 stars where Hubble only sees one
This is the Southern Ring Nebula, where a dying star is slowly expelling layers of its atmosphere in successive waves, creating larger and larger bubbles of colorful gas. Scientists knew there were two stars at the center of the nebula, but they couldn’t see them in the Hubble images.
The Orion Nebula
Dense clouds of cosmic dust in the Orion Nebula, located 1,350 light-years from Earth, obscure star-forming structures for instruments that rely on visible light. By collecting infrared light, Webb can pierce through those dust layers, giving astronomers unprecedented views of the nebula’s various components.