This is because the universe itself has changed our view of the deep universe. Astronomers recently pointed the colossal James Webb Space Telescope at a galaxy cluster dubbed SMACS 0723. Most importantly, galaxies are massive objects, containing hundreds of billions of stars, millions of black holes, and perhaps trillions of planets. The combined mass of these galaxies warps space, like a bowling ball sitting on a mattress. This warped space essentially creates a “lens” through which we look. So the light from the galaxies behind that galaxy cluster that we (or the Webb Telescope) eventually see is distorted. It’s a phenomenon called “gravitational lensing.” As the Space Telescope Science Institute (which operates the telescope) explains: “It’s like having a camera lens between us and the most distant galaxies.” SEE ALSO: James Webb Telescope’s first stunning cosmic images are here Albert Einstein predicted the effect of gravitational lensing a century ago. Some of the galaxies we can see below in Webb’s first deep look at the universe are then magnified, and some are deeply stretched or distorted. “They have been magnified by the gravity of the cluster, as Einstein said they would,” NASA astrophysicist Jane Rigby said at the unveiling of Webb’s first science images. NASA calls this image “Webb’s First Deep Field.” It is an image of the galaxy cluster “SMACS 0723”. The mass of galaxies distorts and magnifies more distant background galaxies Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI In the image above, the ethereal galaxy cluster that appears white is about 4.6 billion years old. They formed around the same time as the sun and Earth, Rigby said. It is these white galaxies that magnify and change the view behind. These more distant objects, which include both red dots and strangely distorted galaxies, are among the oldest objects in the world. “All of the super faint, dark red tiny dots, as well as many of the brighter, oddly shaped objects in this stunning image are extremely distant galaxies that no human eye has ever seen before,” said Harald Ebeling, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii. . The Astronomy Institute said in a statement. The faintest objects in this Webb image are about 13.1 billion years old, Rigby said. However, Webb will soon look even further into the past, over 13.5 billion years ago, just after the first stars and galaxies formed.
The deep space observatory
The Webb Telescope – a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency – is designed to make unprecedented discoveries. “With this telescope, it’s really hard not to break records,” Thomas Zurbuchen, an astrophysicist and NASA associate for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, told a news conference recently. Here’s how Webb will achieve unparalleled things:
Giant mirror: Webb’s mirror, which captures the light, is more than 21 feet in diameter. That’s more than two and a half times the size of the Hubble Space Telescope’s mirror. Capturing more light allows Webb to see more distant, ancient objects. “We’re going to see the first stars and galaxies that ever formed,” Jean Creighton, astronomer and director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, told Mashable last year.
Infrared view: Unlike Hubble, which largely sees light visible to us, Webb is primarily an infrared telescope, meaning it sees light in the infrared spectrum. This allows us to see much more of the universe. Infrared has longer wavelengths than visible light, so light waves slip more efficiently through cosmic clouds. light does not collide as often and is not scattered by these densely packed particles. Ultimately, Webb’s infrared vision can penetrate places Hubble cannot. “It lifts the veil,” Creighton said. Looking at distant exoplanets: The Webb Telescope it carries specialized equipment, called spectrometers, which will revolutionize our understanding of these distant worlds. The instruments can decipher which molecules (such as water, carbon dioxide and methane) are present in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets – whether they are gas giants or smaller rocky worlds. Webb will examine exoplanets in the Milky Way galaxy. Who knows what we’ll find. “We might learn things we never thought of,” Mercedes López-Morales, an exoplanet researcher and astrophysicist at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Mashable in 2021.
“We’re going to see the first stars and galaxies that ever formed,” Jean Creighton, astronomer and director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, told Mashable last year. “It lifts the veil,” Creighton said. “We might learn things we never thought of,” Mercedes López-Morales, an exoplanet researcher and astrophysicist at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Mashable in 2021.
