Title: James Webb's amazing Discoveries and and Images so far
Being the most powerful space telescope is not easy. People, scientists, engineers, everyone
has high expectations! But luckily, the James Webb Telescope didn't disappoint anyone.
It was launched on Christmas 2021. Its first goal was to reach the Lagrange point L2, an
equilibrium point in the Sun-Earth system, and to start orbiting around this point.
It nailed it, and it didn't have a single moment to chill, because people wanted it
to be operative as soon as possible!
So it carefully started preparing everything: the 18 hexagonal mirror segments, the sunshield,
and the instruments. And once ready, it started sending us pictures of the universe as we
had never seen it. Looking through Webb's eyes, our understanding
of the cosmos is changing – and will change forever:
This video is a summary of all the magical things Webb showed us so far!
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Let's start with this one: the Southern Nebula ring.
This is one of the five pictures released on 12 Jul 2022. You can see brownish and reddish
clouds of gas, and if you look closer, you'll see something bright in the middle.
That's a star! It has six spikes, but in reality, it is a giant ball of gas, with solar flares
and stuff, but no spikes. We see the spikes because of Webb's mirror's shape, which is
hexagonal. The thing is, that's not a single star. Using
the MIRI – mid-infrared instrument - camera onboard the telescope, astronomers were able
to disentangle the two.
The second star, shown at the left in red, is in the process to become a fully dense
white dwarf star. As it transforms into a white dwarf, the star periodically ejects
mass – that is, the material you see all around, the ring.
The bluer star on the right also helped shape the scene. It actually gave a big contribution
to stirring up the ejected material.
Webb captured this scene in mid-infrared light — most of which can only be observed from
space. Mid-infrared light helps researchers detect objects enshrouded in dust, like the
red star.
As you can see, this powerful MIRI instrument offers an incredible amount of detail, and
if you look close enough, you can realize that very distant galaxies are hiding behind
the red clouds.
Studying the universe in the infrared is so convenient because the light in the infrared
is less absorbed by interstellar clouds. That's why we are able to see such distant objects
in the background!
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This second image is honestly breathtaking.
what you're seeing here are the so-called “Cosmic Cliffs”.
This is actually a young, star-forming region in the Carina Nebula.
It was captured by the NIR Cam on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, and we have never seen
it in such great detail. Apart from its intrinsic beauty, this image
teaches us a lot.
First of all, this object is 7.600 light years away, and the cavernous area has been carved
from the nebula by the intense radiation and stellar winds from massive, hot young stars
located in the center of the bubble, above the area shown in the image.
Basically, when a star is young, is also really active. And if there's some gas around it,
it is soon blown away. Stars want their own space too!
Looking at this star-forming region in the southern constellation Carina, as well as
others like it, Webb can see newly forming stars and study the gas and dust that made
them.
Recently, a team of scientists and music experts have been able to translate this picture to
sound.
So here we are, we've got a new immersive way to explore some of the first full-color
infrared images and data from NASA's James Webb Telescope!
You can find the full sound in the link in the description, but be careful: brighter
light in the image is louder!
======================== Webb has also shown us, Jupiter, as we had
never seen it before:
I mean, look. This is not one of the pictures of Jupiter we are used to. We don't see the
usual orange and brownish colors of the gaseous giant. Instead, it looks greyer and almost...fluorescent!
What's going on? Webb, are you drunk? Well, not really. The thing is – as we've
already said – Webb explores the universe in infrared wavelengths. The images come from
the NIRCam, a near-infrared camera, which has three specialized infrared filters that
showcase details of the planet.
The famous great red spot, appears white in this image, as do other clouds because they
are absorbing and reflecting back a lot of sunlight!
Also, there's something really weird going on here: JUPITER HAS RINGS???
Yeah, indeed. Saturn is not alone, even though Jupiter's rings are way fainter than Saturn's.
These rings are mainly made of dust particles. In the picture, you can also see Amalthea,
and Adrastea, two of Jupiter's moons. But perhaps the most interesting phenomenon
to study here is the Aurora. There are actually two auroras on Jupiter.
The southern one, and the Northern one. Auroras are created when high-energy particles
enter a planet’s atmosphere near its magnetic poles and collide with atoms of gas. Studying
this image helps us to determine how various components of Jupiter's auroras respond to
different conditions in the solar wind, a stream of charged particles ejected from the
sun.
As you can see, the James Webb Space Telescope works really well both in the long and short-distance
regimes. Astonishing.
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But this is not the end. Ladies and Gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts because what I'm going
to show you...something out of this world...literally!
This is the first-ever direct image of an exoplanet taken by Webb.
You are now witnessing the state of the art of science exploration.
Why? Do you have any idea how difficult it is to take a direct image of an exoplanet?
Not only it is hard because they are small with respect to stars, and because they are
far away. It is even harder because they usually orbit
around a star, and stars are so much brighter than planets!
The planet caught by Webb is called HIP 65426 b, and it is more than 10.000 times fainter
than its host star, in the near-infrared.
What you really see in this picture though, are a series of pictures taken by Webb using
different filters. In each filtered image, the planet appears
as a slightly differently shaped blob of light, because of the different optical systems used
in each case.
The view at 3.00 micrometers is the purple one, the blue one is at 4.44 micrometers – a
slightly longer wavelength – the yellow and the red were taken at 11.4 and 15.5 micrometers.
Although this is not the first direct image of an exoplanet we have – for example, the
Hubble space telescopes already gave us some – this is a really important step for Webb.
This picture is basically screaming “Webb can help us find life on other planets!”,
and we are happy to know that.
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Speaking of exoplanets, Webb also provided us with the Spectrum of Wasp 96b.
This planet is located 1150 light years from Earth and orbits its star every 3.4 days.
What Webb discovered is that this planet has a sodium-rich atmosphere. To be fair, other
observations had already confirmed that, but Webb's spectrum is the most detailed of its
kind to date!
But this is not the end of the story, because some days later, Webb put his eyes on Wasp
39b, and he found something incredible.
Previous observations of Wasp 39b from other telescopes, like Hubble and Spitzer space
telescopes, revealed the presence of water vapor in the planet's atmosphere.
But Webb's infrared sensitivity has now confirmed the presence of carbon dioxide on this planet.
This is the real first evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside
the solar system.
Spectroscopy of planets is really important because it gives us some hints on the composition
of its atmosphere, the origin of the planet, and how it evolved. In the upcoming months,
Webb will make this kind of measurement for a huge number of planets. Keep up the good
work, James Webb!
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In this enormous image, you can see and admire Stephan's quintet, discovered by the French
astronomer Edouard Stephan in 1877.
At first glance, it is nothing more than a visual group of five galaxies, and they seem
to lie close to each other. But only four of them are truly close together
and caught up in a cosmic dance. The fifth and leftmost galaxy – NGC 7320
- is not bounded to the system and it resides 40 million light years from Earth.
The other four, NGC 7317, NGC 7318A, NGC 7318B, and NGC 7319 are about 290 million light years
away. They are interacting galaxies, and their shapes
are weird. This is because tidal forces acting between the four objects are shaping the galaxies
and distorting them over million years. Sometimes, the action of a galaxy on another
is so strong that it triggers star formation because the gas – from which stars form
– is perturbed and starts collapsing.
As a really nice bonus, Webb revealed a vast sea of thousands of distant background galaxies
reminiscent of Hubble’s Deep Fields.
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Did I say DEEP FIELDS? Well, just saying, this is one of the most
detailed Deep fields ever taken.
This image is amazing: you have everything that you could ask for.
Weird-shaped galaxies, gravitational lensing effect, and god knows what else: probably
there's also dark matter, even if we are not able to see it.
But perhaps the most interesting thing here, is that...every single bright spot here is
a galaxy. Of course, some stars happened to be in the
field of view as well, but you can recognize them from the spikes!
Webb’s NIRCam has brought distant galaxies into sharp focus – they have tiny, faint
structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features.
This image actually shows a cluster of galaxies, SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years
ago. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster is what acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying
even more distant galaxies, including some seen when the universe was less than a billion
years old.
Webb holds the record for what appears to be the oldest galaxy ever discovered. Look
how tiny, and cute!
Its name is GLASS-z13 and it was born just 300 million years after the Big Bang.
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Last but not least, some days ago Webb snapped a perfect shot of an Einstein ring.
An Einstein ring is created when light from a galaxy or star passes by a massive object
en route to the Earth. Due to gravitational lensing, the light is diverted, making it
seem to come from different places. If the source, lens, and observer are all in perfect
alignment, the light appears as a ring.
But where does the light of the ring come from?
Those photons belong to a distant galaxy, JO418. It is about 12 billion light-years
from Earth, making it one of the oldest galaxies in the universe.
The bright blue spot at the center of the ring is another massive galaxy. It warps the
spacetime, curving JO418's light. The magic trick is then easily performed.
And we love it.
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This video ends here! What's your favorite Webb discovery so far?
Let us know in the comments below! And if you enjoyed the video, don't forget
to share it, and I'll see you next time on the channel.