The full set of the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to be released on Tuesday. The telescope promises a glimpse into the early days of the universe, when the first stars lit up and galaxies were born. There will be a foretaste of the pictures on Monday evening: US President Joe Biden will unveil one of the first pictures of “Webb” at 11:00 p.m. CEST in the White House, the European Space Agency ESA announced on Monday.
“Secrets will be revealed”
The telescope had already sent the first test images to earth at the beginning of the year – including photos of a star and a selfie. The images, scheduled for release on Tuesday, are said to “demonstrate Webb’s full scientific abilities.” Among other things, the Carina Nebula can be seen in these images, where bizarre-looking dust and gas structures pile up, the galaxy group “Stephan’s Quintet” and the giant exoplanet “Wasp-96 b”.
“What we will see on July 12 is not just an image,” Swiss NASA research director Thomas Zurbuchen recently tweeted. It is a new world view of nature. Secrets hidden for decades, centuries and millennia would be revealed.
Hunt for habitable planets
“Webb” is the most powerful – and most expensive – telescope ever built. It is intended to explore the early days of the universe 13 billion years ago and thus look back only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Astronomers hope to draw conclusions about the formation of the first stars and galaxies. Webb recordings should also show whether there are habitable planets with water resources.
After the James Webb telescope completed its 1.5 million kilometer journey into space in December last year, it was necessary to extend the huge sun shield, align the mirror and calibrate and test the instruments. Now, six months later, the scientific mission can begin.
The “Webb” mission is a collaboration between the space agencies ESA, NASA and the Canadian space agency CSA. Launched in 1989, the project was originally scheduled to go live in the early 2000s. However, new problems delayed the project for years, and the costs tripled to almost ten billion dollars. The start had to be postponed several times.
Source: Nachrichten
