And now I'm sure you've seen this new
image from the James Webb Space Telescope.
It's the deepest look into our universe yet,
but if you're wondering what exactly
all that means, you're not alone.
I'm right there with you.
Let's bring in a man who actually
has an asteroid named after him.
How cool is that?
Chief meteorologist Matt Zaffino.
Matt, what are we looking at here?
Yeah, thanks so much Pat. You know what?
The the the time scales and the distance
scales are so vast it it can be really
hard to wrap your brain around it,
so we'll try to give you a
little perspective on that.
First of all, the telescope itself.
This is an artist rendition of what
it looks like once deployed in space,
this was launched like six months ago,
so it took a long time to get into position,
and these are the solar panels out here.
This is created by NASA and the
Goddard Space Flight Center,
and this is about 40 feet long.
That's about 60 feet long.
The whole thing weighs about £15,000,
so you know this is not your
backyard telescope.
Not at all.
This is, and the reason you want to
have a telescope in space like we did.
The Hubble is because you just do
away with all the light pollution,
all the other things in the
atmosphere they can get in the way,
and it allows us to peer deeper and
deeper into the universe and see things
that we literally have never seen before.
Never been seen before by human eye,
so that's why this is so important.
Plus, with the advances in technology,
we're getting clearer, crisper images,
things that are so old.
I mean that will literally help
scientists discover how the universe,
how the universe formed.
But it's also just super cool.
I mean, you see the stars.
You see these things of lightning going OK?
What about it?
Well, if you zoom in and you can do this,
you can download these images yourself
and zoom around like look at this thing.
Look at that now to my eye that looks like
a storm and it looks like a hurricane.
It would be a southern hemisphere
hurricane because it's rotating.
It would be rotating that way,
but nonetheless that's a Galaxy
and so the distances here you know
I'm covering it with my hand.
That's like millions of miles across.
So think about that.
Think about where this telescope is,
how far away from Earth?
It is and it's looking at something
that's millions of miles across
and it's making it look that small.
So super cool stuff to see there
so that one caught my eye.
There was another one that
was orange farther north,
but then this floppy looking
thing also caught my eye.
That's like a Galaxy on its side because
we're just looking at 2D images.
And of course space is 3D,
so this is a Galaxy that's coming towards
the camera towards you and away from you.
And then all these stars,
some of which are are millions
of light years away and remember
a light year is the distance,
not a measure of time.
It's the time it takes light to travel
one year and light travels at 186,000
miles a second so the distances are
massive so the images are super cool.
You can see things that
we've never seen before.
They're like that couple more images for you.
I mean, look at the clarity on this.
I don't even know what that is,
but there's a star in the middle of it,
some nebula, some Galaxy there,
and then finally I'm going to show
you just a couple of points on this.
What we will see from this James
Webb Space Telescope, new galaxies.
We're already seeing that,
and we're just getting started.
Like this because we're just getting
the first images in the last couple of
weeks and I also understand that we may
see planets that actually have water
that may have breathable atmospheres.
Imagine that I mean we didn't,
even we didn't know those exist,
but now we actually be able to
see them with this telescope and
it'll really help us to understand
the origins of our solar system.
How we got here.
So again, Pat it is a little bit
mind bending to think about this,
the time and the distances and all of that,
but the clarity of these images really cool.
However,
I must say you may be wondering.
Who was James Webb right and and why did
he get this RAD telescope named after him?
Well,
he was the administrator of NASA's
back in the 60s when we did the
big push to get people on the moon,
and that's why he got the
telescope named after him.
However, it is not without controversy.
There were some astronomers
who wanted it in space.
Scientists who wanted this
telescope named after an actual
astronomer that didn't happen.
They were disappointed.
And also Mr.
Webb was implicated in something
called the Lavender Scare,
which was an effort.
By the federal government back
in the 50s and 60s to purge LBGTQ
LBGTQ individuals from the agency.
So there is a little bit of controversy
over the naming of this telescope,
but still the images are remarkable.
Back to you.
Thank you Matt. We'll try and forget
about the name and focus on the
images because they are spectacular.
They are. Thank you so much.