Most people know this event as the Big Bang, but it took time to create what we see today. Many of these. After billions of years it transformed from a place of high density and temperature, then expansion, then cooling. Eventually the simplest elements formed, such as hydrogen and helium, the most abundant elements in our universe. The first stars lit up, piercing the swampy darkness. They then came together to form galaxies, islands of stars in this dark void, and even superclusters of hundreds to thousands of galaxies linked together. Supernovae—violent explosions of massive stars—exploded within these star islands, creating more stars and eventually planets. Like Earth, where life sprung up in abundance. On Tuesday, the most powerful telescope ever built will help humanity trace its roots back to the beginning of time by peering through gas and dust, shedding light on what was until now invisible. And maybe even reveal an atmosphere around an exoplanet. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a joint mission between NASA, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA), will release several images — at least five — of the darkness and dust back when the universe was in its infancy. On Friday, the agencies announced their goals:
SMACS 0723a cluster of galaxies that distort the light of objects behind them allowing astronomers to see faint, distant galaxies behind them. WASP-96ba gas giant planet located 1,150 light years from Earth. The Southern Ring Nebula. Stephan’s Quinteta collection of five galaxies. And one of the most magnificent nebulae in the night sky, the Carina Nebula.
“You’re going to see images that are absolutely stunning,” said René Doyon, a professor at the Université de Montréal and principal investigator of NIRISS, one of the four science instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope.
🎯 Objective(s) achieved!
The targets of the first Webb images have been announced:
✨ WASP-96b
✨ Southern Ring Nebula
✨ Stephan’s Quintet
✨ Carina Nebula
Tune in on July 12 as we reveal the first images of Webb & pic.twitter.com/TLP2LenkPF
—@NASAWebb
JWST is a $10 billion powerhouse. Sitting in an orbit beyond the Moon, the telescope is larger, and therefore much more powerful, than the Hubble Space Telescope orbiting Earth. It also has different capabilities than Hubble, and as such, is able to look further back in time, when the universe was in its infancy.
Canada has played a major role in Webb’s capabilities. First, there’s the Canadian-made Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS), which is vital to keeping the telescope on target.
There’s also the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), which will help astronomers study the atmospheres of exoplanets and observe distant galaxies.
The Southern Ring Nebula, also known as the “Eight Burst” Nebula because it appears to be a figure eight when viewed through some telescopes, is visible in the southern hemisphere. The nebula is nearly half a light-year in diameter and 2,000 light-years away. Gas is being pulled away from the dying star at its center at a speed of 14 kilometers per second. (NASA/The Hubble Heritage Team [STScI/AURA/NASA])
Because of Canada’s contribution, astronomers here will have plenty of time to use the telescope.
“Canadians should be proud of that [be part] of this project,” said Doyon, who has worked at Webb for the past 20 years. “Every single image, every [bit] of the data coming out of Webb will have been guided by the eye, the Canadian eye from the FGS. So… we should definitely be proud.”
Looking deeper into the past
The further away an object is, the longer it takes for its light to reach us. This means that everything we see is as it was, not as it is. Telescopes allow us to see further back in time by collecting faint light. The bigger the telescope, the more light it can collect and the further back it can see. While Hubble has been able to see distant galaxies, it doesn’t have the resolution that Webb has, so that means the images will be much sharper, revealing much more detail. Webb also sees in the near-infrared, meaning it can look through dust and gas that might otherwise obscure objects. Hubble primarily sees the universe in visible light, like the human eye, although it can also see in ultraviolet and near-infrared wavelengths. Webb, however, is optimized to see in the infrared. All of this means that Webb will look deeper into our past than ever before and provide astronomers with incredible detail. “There’s a difference between detection and deep study. Hubble had seen blobs of objects that we think formed just a few 100 million years after the birth of the universe,” said Lamiya Mowla, an astronomer at the University of Toronto’s Dunlap. Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics. “However, these need to be studied even more deeply with James Webb. With James Webb we can actually see objects as they form, right after they get hot, disks form, galaxy bulges form. That’s the type of epoch that we’ll be able to see with the James Webb Space Telescope’. This image shows the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2012, an enhanced version of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image that has additional observing time. It revealed for the first time a population of distant galaxies at redshifts between 9 and 12, including the most distant object observed to date. These galaxies will require confirmation using spectroscopy from the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope before they can be considered fully confirmed. (NASA, ESA, R. Ellis (Caltech)) Mowla, who specializes in galaxy evolution and formation, is also part of Canada’s NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS), which will study some of the earliest galaxies in the universe. He is eagerly awaiting the release of the first scientific images and will be watching from the University of St. Mary’s in Halifax with other members of CANUCS, including Chris Willott, an astronomer at the National Council of Canada’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre, who is leading the research. The instrument will use NIRISS to study galaxies at different times in the history of the universe. I almost broke my jaw the first time I saw this data.- René Doyon, professor at Université de Montréal Willott said he has already seen some images from early tests. “It’s very exciting to finally see the data coming out,” Willott said. “I’ve been looking at these images for months. And they’re just so spectacular, and it’s really exciting that the whole world is going to see them on Tuesday.” He looks forward to getting more data to study the evolution of galaxies, which come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes. “I want to see how far back we can really go to the beginning of the universe. We know that Webb will break the records that we could get from Hubble in terms of how far back and how early in the universe we can look. But we don’t really know how much back we’ll go with Webb. And that’s something I think will take time.”
‘A New Chapter’
Not only will Webb be able to see some of the earliest galaxies, but it can also detect atmospheres around distant planets orbiting other stars. Eventually, astronomers hope that Webb will be able to detect possible signatures of life from these exoplanets. “I can say that [on] On July 12, we turn a new page in a new chapter in the study of exoplanet atmospheres,” said Doyon. “The quality of the data is simply amazing. I almost broke my jaw the first time I saw that data.” While the general public may be excited to see new and more detailed images of our universe, for astronomers all it takes is getting their hands on the data for analysis. For example, Doyon said, there’s the famous exoplanet system known as TRAPPIST-1, which has seven planets, three of which are in the habitable zone, a region around a star where water can exist on a planet’s surface. This graphic shows, top row, artist’s renderings of TRAPPIST-1’s seven planets with their orbital periods, distances from the star, radii, and masses compared to those of Earth. The bottom row shows data for Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. (NASA/JPL-Caltech) “The only way to know if they have water on their surface is to measure the atmosphere,” he said. “And Webb has the ability to do that and particularly the NIRISS instrument.” But this is only the beginning of the search for exoplanets. Astronomers hope to eventually find signatures of life. “The next question is: do they have water [their surfaces], then the next step will be biosignatures, gas produced only by biological activity. This is a long shot. I mean, we know it’s going to be very hard to detect that with Webb, it’s probably going to take a lifetime of JWST to do that, but who knows? That’s the cool thing about it: we’re going to be surprised.” Mowla also expects to be surprised by researching galactic evolution. “Really, I expect to see something that cannot be explained by current theory. Because that always happens. Whenever you have new data and you look at the universe in a different realm. You always find something that will go against theories and make you rethink a lot of things “, he said.
