The first object is the Carina Nebula, a large cloud of dust and gas where a massive star exploded in 1843. The nebula is famous for its beauty as well as for hosting the star WR 25, the brightest star in our galaxy. It is large by nebula standards and is located 7,600 light-years away in the constellation Carina, visible in the southern hemisphere. Eta Carinae as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument in the ultraviolet. The James Webb Space Telescope will image the same nebula in the infrared. NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of Arizona, Tucson) and J. Morse (BoldlyGo Institute, New York) The second object is a giant exoplanet called WASP-96b. Located 1,150 light-years away, it has about half the mass of Jupiter and orbits very close to its star, with a year there lasting just 3.4 days. The data on this planet will include a spectrum, which can be used to tell what an object is made of. It will likely include data on the exoplanet’s atmosphere, which is one of Webb’s new capabilities. The third object is another nebula, the Southern Ring Nebula, which is bright and has a characteristic round shape, consisting of gas around a star that is reaching the end of its life. The fourth and fifth objects are on a larger scale, including a galaxy group called Stephan’s Quintet that lies 290 million light-years away and has four of its five galaxies very close, and a deep-field image called SMACS 0723 in which gravitational lensing gives a deep view of extremely distant and faint galaxies. These images are just a taste of the work James Webb will be doing in the first year and show the variety of types of objects it can study. The images are scheduled to be released on Tuesday, July 12, starting at 10:30 AM. ET (7:30 a.m. PT), and you can watch the launch live on NASA TV.
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