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

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

00:05 From an image of five galaxies locked in an endless cosmic ballet,

00:09 to a view of the cosmos that's so deep, it takes us back to the very beginnings of galaxies themselves.

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

00:26 The five new full-colour photos, released by NASA this week as test images of the brand new James Webb Space Telescope,

00:34 show our universe in unprecedented, breathtaking detail.

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

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

00:48 is 100 times more powerful than its predecessor,

00:51 and able to take highly detailed snapshots of our universe in a matter of days.

00:56 The telescope was launched into space on Christmas Day,

00:59 and spent six months calibrating its instruments and unfurling its 21-foot-wide gold-plated primary mirror.

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

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

01:19 NASA has released five of those test images this week,

01:22 all specially chosen to show how the telescope can help astronomers discover more about our cosmos.

01:30 First on the list is Stéphane's Quintet,

01:33 a group of five tightly-bound galaxies located 290 million light-years away.

01:40 Four of these galaxies are constantly circling around each other,

01:44 locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters.

01:49 Scientists hope that by studying this dancing quintet,

01:52 they could gain some insights into dark matter,

01:56 the mysterious substance believed to make up most of the universe's matter.

02:01 Next is this image of the Carina Nebula,

02:05 a dust and gas cloud 7,600 light-years from Earth,

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

02:15 It is home to many stars much larger than our Sun,

02:19 making it an attractive place to look for clues into the beginnings of our solar system,

02:23 as well as its dramatic finale.

02:27 On the subject of dying stars, the third image in NASA's teaser is the Southern Ring Nebula,

02:33 also known as the "Ape Burst" for its figure-eight appearance.

02:37 Positioned around 2,000 light-years from Earth,

02:39 the nebula is an expanding cloud of gas and dust,

02:43 spewed out by the death throes of a red dwarf star.

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

02:52 these remnants could one day go on to form new stars and planets,

02:57 giving us a fascinating peek into the cosmic cycle of death and rebirth.

03:02 The fourth snapshot wasn't so much an image,

03:05 but the first full colour spectrum of WASP-96b,

03:10 a giant, mostly gaseous exoplanet that's half the mass of Jupiter

03:15 and is located nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth.

03:20 First discovered in 2014, WASP-96b is so close to its Sun

03:24 that a single orbit takes just 3.4 Earth days.

03:27 By studying the way light is absorbed and re-emitted by this planet's atmosphere,

03:31 the web was able to detect water vapour.

03:35 If scientists can spot molecules like methane or carbon dioxide on other planets,

03:40 they could use it as a way to hunt for life beyond our solar system.

03:45 And we've saved the best till last.

03:47 This image, called the web's first deep field,

03:50 shows a cluster of galaxies with a combined gravity that is so strong

03:54 they act as a gigantic magnifying lens, warping and concentrating distant starlight

04:00 in an effect called gravitational lensing.

04:03 This doesn't just enable us to see deeper into the universe,

04:05 but because light travels at a fixed speed,

04:08 allows us to detect older light emitted further back in the universe's past,

04:13 an optical time machine for which we can glimpse the faintest glimmerings of starlight

04:18 from the first ever galaxies.

04:20 Now, if none of this has melted your brain so far,

04:23 every light source in this image that doesn't have the characteristic diffraction spikes of a star

04:28 is a galaxy, and each galaxy here contains billions of stars

04:32 and trillions of worlds.

04:34 All of this is contained within an image that is just the tiniest slice of sky,

04:38 the equivalent of holding a sand grain up at arm's length.

04:42 And for all the unprecedented and staggering depth in this image,

04:46 it took the James Webb just 12 and a half hours to capture it.

04:51 And these images are just the beginning.

04:53 Now that the telescope is in operation,

04:55 scientists from all over the world will be using it to explore space

04:58 like it has never been explored before.

05:00 We don't know yet what the James Webb Space Telescope will teach us,

05:04 but one thing we do know for certain is that our understanding of our universe

05:08 is about to be changed forever.

05:11 (Music)

05:15 (Music)

05:18 (upbeat music)

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