Hey thanks so much for joining
us here on 9 News Plus.
And as you might have heard NASA
releasing the first images from
the James Wade Webb telescope on
Monday and Tuesday and folks the
images are absolutely stunning.
5 images released by NASA show
gas planets over 1000 light
years away from Earth galaxies,
many of them interacting with
one another far away stars in
incredible detail and lots more
and for a bit more on these just.
Stunning images what they mean
and what we can expect from this
amazing web telescope moving forward.
We're now joined by Doctor Ketchum,
you, a curator of Space science from
the Denver Museum of Nature and
Nature and Science and Doctor You.
It is a pleasure to have you on
again to talk about these just
absolutely extraordinary images.
Yeah, happy to be here.
I think you know I speak for all
astronomers as well as anyone
who's interested in space and just
saying that the image release has
exceeded everyone's expectations.
As you say, they're really stunning
and they're just a beautiful
example of what we're going to
expect from the James Webb Space
Telescope in coming years.
Before we get into anything else,
one of those images, correct?
If I'm wrong, is behind you.
Is that correct?
Yes, so behind me I have the.
They're release image showing the
Carina Nebula and that's a region
where there are lots of gas clouds,
but also massive stars that drive.
Ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds.
And so they're calling
these the cosmic cliffs.
And so you can sort of see behind me
what looks like, you know,
Earthbound. Geological formations,
but they're actually gas clouds that
have been excavated by the UV radiation
and by the winds from massive stars.
And so this is a region that's
in turmoil because the gas clouds
are being blasted away, but.
For me, young stars,
so this place is a place where future stars
and future solar systems will be born.
Absolutely stunning again.
I know one take away that will
inevitably happen when we're done
here is we are going to feel very,
very small about all of ourselves.
Once all this is what once
we finish our check here.
But for starters Dr do you mind
getting some broad idea about the
images that were released and what
we are seeing for the first time?
Things that we hadn't seen before
this amazing telescope came out.
Yeah, so we can talk about the image that
was released at the White House event.
So this is like a precursor.
But this was a the James Webb Space
Telescope staring at a patch of sky and
the way that they described it was the
patch of sky is sort of like a grain of
sand that you hold at arm's length and
so you can imagine that's a very tiny
patch of sky and I think the telescope
looked at this for just under a day.
So on the order of 12 hours.
And and just even with the day of
or less than a day of observations,
it was able to see actually about
13.1 billion years in the past.
And so you're seeing galaxies
extending out in distance.
And because the speed of light is finite,
what that means is that the further you look,
the further back in time you're seeing,
and so we're seeing galaxies from,
you know, relatively close.
By all the way to ones that were formed,
just hundreds of millions
of years after The Big Bang.
I wonder if light has jet lag,
but the 13.5 billion
years again just stunning.
Any one image that particularly
stood out to you favorite?
Something that you really
learned from one particular?
Yeah, the the one with the galaxies
is just really mind-blowing,
because if you think about it,
you know every single one of
these galaxies contains 10s to
hundreds of billions of stars,
just like our own Milky Way.
And it's probable that not many of
these stars host planets around them.
So not only are we seeing probably
10s of thousands of galaxies,
but you know many thousands of billions
of stars and uncountable planets,
and you know who knows what might be.
On those planets,
and then that that image you know.
Like I said,
you're also looking backwards in time,
so you're actually seeing the evolution
of our universe and the evolution
of galaxies just in one picture.
So it's pretty amazing.
This may also link in here,
so feel free to elaborate on this
a little bit, but since these are
new images we're seeing so much new,
can you tell me something that
you've learned from seeing the
these and what do you think? Again?
Granted these images just came out.
What do you think the scientific
community has also learned from this
new vantage point of these images?
Yeah, I think you know it's still very early.
You know these images were were
selected to be imaged and and
released just six weeks after.
You know they certified that all
the instruments on the telescope
were functioning properly.
So I I suspect even the scientists
themselves haven't really had a chance.
And the ones who decided on
on to which images to take.
They haven't had a chance to really
go in and really start to analyze.
What we're seeing, but you know,
like what we've seen in the past,
anytime that you have a new telescope
that you have a new instrument,
a new camera.
Not only are people always
kind of blown away by,
you know new details that they
might see have never seen before in
places that they have looked before.
But there's always new surprises,
so we really can't even predict
what sort of new surprising
discoveries and new information
will be revealed once astronomers.
Really,
start to dig into these data in these images.
That is what we're seeing now,
and you touched on this at
the beginning a little bit.
But how does what we're seeing now
compared to what we saw with the Hubble
telescope and other predecessors?
Yeah, so the James White Space
Telescope is the largest telescope
that we've ever launched into space,
so you know the the mirror on
James Webb is about 21 feet across,
whereas the mirror on Hubble
is only about 6 feet across.
So the bigger the mirror,
the more light you can gather and
the fainter the object you can see.
So that's why even with under
a day's worth of observations,
James Webb was able to give us these
stunning look at these galaxies.
The other difference between James Webb
and Hubble is that it looks in the infrared,
so this is a part of the spectrum
that our eyes aren't sensitive to.
The Hubble Space Telescope
did have some sensitivity,
but not as as large of a range,
and so with the infrared you
can actually look at galaxies
very early on in the universe,
because as the universe has expanded,
that light is actually stretched
out as well and.
This has stretched out into the
infrared and like the image behind me,
a lot of I'm not actually sure what this
exact region looks like with Hubble.
Hubble has image this field,
but because this is in the infrared,
we're actually able to see through
a lot of the intervening work and
the dust clouds and the gas clouds.
That kind of hide a lot of the stars
that are in this field behind me.
So James Webb does.
Allow us to see things that we
weren't able to see before at all,
so it's pretty amazing.
Certainly is now in terms of you
mentioned how small the speck of sky
that we're looking at with all this is
the plan to survey most of the sky,
or how much of the sky and what
are the I guess capabilities? How?
How much of this guy are we able
to look at with this telescope?
So this telescope isn't actually designed
to survey like large swaths of the sky?
And there there are others and telescopes
both on the ground and on the drawing
board for a feature space mission,
which will be mapping.
Large parts of the sky, as it turns out,
the way telescope observing works is that
for a telescope like this there there is
some dedicated time set aside for sort of
the fundamental missions that the James
Webb Space Telescope was designed for.
Such as I'm looking for the first
stars and the earliest galaxies,
but there's also something called
the Guest Observer program,
and this is something where any astronomer
or really anyone can apply for time
and you just have to write a proposal.
I'm describing what you want to do,
and then it goes through this gauntlet
of peer review where other astronomers
anonymously review your proposal
against thousands of other proposals
and only the best of the best,
get through and get selected
for observing time,
and then the this early batch of images
was an early release instead of images,
so these were targets that were especially
selected that could be observed early on in,
you know,
given where James Webb is in its orbit.
And which people thought would give,
I'm really stunning, you know,
visually amazing results.
But also I'm sure you know the amount
of science that they could get out of.
It was also part of the selection criteria.
But of you know,
going on forward,
I think a lot of the the future
results would be hearing about will
be coming from these guest observers.
And oftentimes you know they might
observe a small patch of the sky.
Or they might observe just one
nebula or one region.
Although you know sometimes some
observers might be applying for
more time to look at bigger patches.
I wouldn't know what to put on that
application other than everything
and maybe finding where the life is.
I don't know, but that's
yeah, imagine you're like you're yeah,
you're really ******** college application
where you have to justify every single
thing that you know you need to do.
But it's fascinating that it's
open to the public like that to me,
which is an in a good way.
I think that's something,
but I guess with this in mind,
do you mind putting into context?
And you mentioned the beginning
of this perhaps is exceeded
expectations about how big of an
achievement is this for NASA and
for the space community as a whole?
Well, I think you know for
astronomers who have followed this,
the IT took many decades for
the telescope to, you know,
to be developed and to finally to be
launched in on Christmas Day of last year.
So Christmas 2021 was when the Ariana
5 rocket took off from French Guiana
to to take it into the telescope
to space and then for the next.
Many weeks and several months,
it actually took a long time for the
telescope to basically just unfold
because it was hacked up inside
its rocket and it went through
this very complicated process.
There's almost like a transformer would
fold it out to be it's normal operating size.
It's basically larger than a tennis
garden is about two stories high,
and so anything.
I mean there's just hundreds of steps
that were involved and so you can
imagine people were on pins and needles.
Because you have any water,
a couple of those steps didn't
happen properly.
You might not have a working
telescope anymore, so it was.
You know people not only were waiting for
so many years to see this telescope go up,
but even launching it and having it.
Get to its final position was sort
of an ordeal as well because you
know he was just waiting for for
all these things to go correctly.
So for these final images,
or these first set of images to
come down and to see that you know
everything with the telescope is
basically working almost perfectly.
That is such a huge relief and I think
for the astronomers who plan these
observations, it's it's probably.
You know very mind-blowing even
for them because you know they were
the first ones to see these images.
And they're also realizing no human
has ever seen you know these galaxies
or these stars in such a way before,
and they were the first ones to
see them and then now,
you know we're all able to see them as well,
but that must have been just
an emotional moment for them.
So they can only imagine any final takeaways.
Anything about the images that we
haven't touched on, or big takeaways
about the telescope as a whole.
Yeah, I think you know.
One final take away is there's one
picture that was released that wasn't a
what you would think of as a picture.
It's just a a plot or graph.
Or it's actually a spectrum,
which is like a fingerprint,
a chemical fingerprint via light,
and it was taken of a large puffy
planet around a distant star,
and what they were able to do with
the James Webb Space Telescope was
to actually determine that there's.
Water vapor in the atmosphere of this planet,
and I mean and.
This follows on work that the
Hubble Space Telescope did
the Spitzer Space Telescope.
But what it shows you is just the
amazing capacity for James Webb
to find signatures of chemical
elements and molecules that.
I'm very important for life
here on Earth and so James Webb
might not actually discover life
elsewhere in the universe,
but it's definitely one really
important tool that will allow us
in the future to find life elsewhere
in the universe that exists.
Wow, that's stunning.
Didn't not know that. So again,
I I feel like I could carry on with this
all day and and pepper you with questions.
But Doctor Petun you, I'll leave this there.
Doctor Kunu curator,
space science from the different
Museum of Nature and Science.
Thank you so much for enlightening
us about these amazing images.
What they mean putting it in the
context and the very exciting,
yet decidedly creepy note there at the end
that this has made perhaps an extraordinary.
Ability to detect life for some of
the chemicals that might be needed
for life outside of our Galaxy.
Thanks so much.
Yeah, thank you for having me, Chris.