The US space agency unveiled a new image on Thursday from one of the massive infrared telescope’s instruments, the Fine Guidance Sensor. NASA casually shared the image on social media to demonstrate Webb’s power and clarity: an almost unbelievably deep view of the universe in red monochrome. The surprise teaser came just six days before the agency and its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, plan to release the first batch of real, color images on July 12. Despite NASA Administrator Bill Nelson’s announcement that the cache will include the deepest image of the universe ever taken, this image—a simple mechanical test of Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor—already breaks the current record for farthest infrared view in the universe, scientists said. SEE ALSO: The Webb Telescope just took the deepest picture of the universe ever Tweet may have been deleted (opens in new tab) To some people, the new footage (at the beginning of this story) might not look like anything too impressive – at best, maybe sesame seeds on a hamburger bun or gnats squishing a car windshield. But what they’re looking at is the abyss: Behind a handful of bright stars with giant spikes of light are galaxies full of solar systems. That’s right: Each of these tiny specks can contain hundreds of billions of stars and planets. Within this single frame are thousands of faint galaxies, according to the telescope team, many in the distant, early universe. In astronomy, looking further away translates into looking back, because light and other forms of radiation take longer to reach us. Do you feel young yet? As Jane Rigby, a project scientist at NASA, once said during the observatory’s early calibration tests: “There’s no way Webb can look … at any point in the sky and not go incredibly deep.” Tweet may have been deleted (opens in new tab) This is true in this case. The Canadian-made Fine Guidance Sensor’s primary job is to point and hold onto mundane targets. Taking photos is just a bonus feature. When the photo was taken, engineers were testing the telescope’s ability to “roll to one side like an aircraft in flight, lock onto a star and roll,” NASA explained in a blog post. This may trigger a visual for some recent fans of Top Gun: Maverick. The image is the result of 72 exposures over a period of 32 hours, superimposed on each other. The ragged edges of the photo are due to overlapping frames, according to the post. “There’s no way Webb could look… at any point in the sky and not go incredibly deep.” Webb, launched into space on Christmas morning six months ago, will observe some of the oldest, faintest light in the universe. Astronomers expect Webb’s science to spark a golden age in our understanding of the universe. The powerful $10 billion infrared telescope will study a period less than 300 million years after the Big Bang, when many of the first stars and galaxies were born. Scientists will also use it to look at the atmospheres of other worlds. Discoveries of water and methane, for example—some of the main ingredients of life—could be signs of potentially life-friendly environments. The powerful $10 billion James Webb Infrared Space Telescope will study a period less than 300 million years after the Big Bang, when many of the first stars and galaxies were born. Credit: NASA NASA officials stressed Thursday that the test shot is still “rough around the edges” and won’t hold a candle to the quality of images coming soon on July 12. This is not colored and will not hold up to a standard required for scientific analysis, they said. Engineers boosted the data with a red filter, just as they did with previous test images, to show the contrast. The sharp hexagonal spikes protruding from the stars are the result of Webb’s hexagonal mirror segments. This affects the way light travels, causing diffraction. The stars also appear to have holes in their centers, a feature that will not be present in the next pictures, according to the Webb team. Engineers said the holes are there because the fairings didn’t have a “punch”. “Jitter is when the telescope is repositioned slightly between each exposure,” according to NASA. “The centers of bright stars appear black because Webb’s detectors are saturating, and the telescope’s pointing has not changed over exposures to capture the center from different pixels within the camera’s detectors.” The upcoming images and science data will be released during an event that will be broadcast at 10:30 a.m. ET on July 12 from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The public can watch live coverage on NASA TV.
