JWST is NASA’s massive new deep space observatory, which launched on Christmas Day 2021. Featuring a large golden mirror spanning more than 21 feet across, the observatory is set to transform the field of astrophysics by collecting light from first stars and galaxies formed immediately after the Big Bang. It is also designed to study objects throughout our Universe in unprecedented detail, giving us insight into our distant solar system, planets outside our cosmic neighborhood, asteroids, exotic stars in the deepest reaches of space, and more. To get its first images, JWST observed these target objects and regions of space for 120 hours, collecting five days of data. Until now, we didn’t know much about what the first images of JWST would be, although we did get some hints from NASA leadership. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA science associate, revealed that we would see light from the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system, known as an exoplanet. And NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said one image is the “deepest image of our Universe ever taken.” study these deep space destinations before we see them in vivid detail Now we can study these deep space destinations before seeing them in vivid detail next week. (In the case of the exoplanet, we expect to get a glimpse of its spectrum, an analysis of the light in its atmosphere.) The list of targets for this important moment was selected by an international team of people from NASA, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and the Space Telescope Science Institute, which oversees JWST operations and science. Some of the targets we’ve seen before, thanks to images taken by JWST’s predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. But JWST’s mirror is nearly three times wider than Hubble’s. Additionally, JWST is about 1 million miles from Earth, while Hubble is in low Earth orbit. Compared to Hubble images, JWST images should be even more detailed. See the list of targets below, as well as brief descriptions provided by NASA: Carina Nebula. The Carina Nebula is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky, located about 7,600 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. Nebulae are stellar nurseries where stars form. The Carina Nebula hosts many massive stars, several times larger than the Sun. WASP-96 b (spectrum). WASP-96 b is a giant planet outside our solar system, composed mostly of gas. The planet, located nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth, orbits its star every 3.4 days. It has about half the mass of Jupiter and its discovery was announced in 2014. Southern Ring Nebula. The Southern Ring, or ‘Eight Burst’ nebula, is a planetary nebula – an expanding cloud of gas, surrounding a dying star. It is almost half a light-year in diameter and is about 2,000 light-years away from Earth. The Stephano Quintet: About 290 million light-years away, the Stephano Quintet is located in the constellation Pegasus. Remarkably, it is the first compact galaxy group ever discovered in 1787. Four of the five galaxies in the quintet are locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters. SMACS 0723: Massive foreground galaxy clusters magnify and distort the light of objects behind them, allowing a deep-field view of both extremely distant and intrinsically faint galaxy populations. NASA is set to reveal the images on July 12 at 10:30 am. ET. And they are sure to take your breath away. “What I’ve seen just moves me,” Pam Melroy, a former astronaut and current NASA deputy administrator, said during a news conference, “as a scientist, as an engineer and as a human being.”
