James Webb Telescope Updates

[sjastro]

Mind blowing!
There's too much stuff! (It just aint natural, man!)

Further information from ESA to be released 12th July.

Below is the list of cosmic objects that Webb targeted for these first observations, which will be released in NASA’s live broadcast beginning at 16:30 CEST Tuesday 12 July. Each image will simultaneously be made available on social media as well on esawebb.org.

These listed targets below represent the first wave of full-color scientific images and spectra the observatory has gathered, and the official beginning of Webb’s general science operations. They were selected by an international committee of representatives from NASA, ESA, CSA, and the Space Telescope Science Institute.

• Carina Nebula: The Carina Nebula is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky, located approximately 7,600 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. Nebulae are stellar nurseries where stars form. The Carina Nebula is home to many massive stars, several times larger than the Sun.

• WASP-96b (spectrum): WASP-96b is a giant planet outside our solar system, composed mainly 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 nearly half a light-year in diameter and is located approximately 2,000 light years away from Earth.

• Stephan’s Quintet: About 290 million light-years away, Stephan’s Quintet is located in the constellation Pegasus. It is notable for being the first compact galaxy group ever discovered. Four of the five galaxies within 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, permitting a deep field view into both the extremely distant and intrinsically faint galaxy populations.

The release of these first images marks the official beginning of Webb’s science operations, which will continue to explore the mission’s key science themes. Teams have already applied through a competitive process for time to use the telescope, in what astronomers call its first “cycle,” or first year of observations.

The image of the Carina Nebula will be interesting when comparing a 6.5 metre infrared telescope with my humble 0.28 metre image of the same object.

 

[Green Sun]

The release of the first image will be moved up to a preview event taking place on tomorrow, July 11th, at 5:00 PM EDT:

https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1546290906046816256

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-updates-coverage-for-webb-telescope-s-first-images-reveal

President Joe Biden will release one of Webb’s first images in a preview event at the White House in Washington. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson will provide remarks. A live stream of the event will be available on NASA TV. The image will be available simultaneously on NASA’s website

Can't wait! I'm extremely excited to see the first images roll in!

 

[Green Sun]

The first image, a deep field of SMACS 0723, has been released!
https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages

Four more images will be released tomorrow, with the press conference starting at 10:30 AM EDT:
- An image of a Gas Giant Exoplanet
- Two images of the Eight-Burst Nebula (NGC 3132 - Wikipedia)
- An image of Stephan's Quintet (Stephan's Quintet - Wikipedia)

For comparison, below is a Hubble capture of SMACS 0723:

I can't wait to see even more tomorrow.

 

[Leaviathan]

I wonder if it can zoom in on planets of interest.

 

[Halbhh]

I wonder if it can zoom in on planets of interest.

Yes. Any telescope can be aimed at one particular spot. What a scope can see there varies, and Webb ought to be able to take spectral of star light passing through planetary atmospheres for some exoplanets, which will be interesting (and may lead to breathless headlines that should be treated with some caution in my experience).

 

[Halbhh]

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/...livers-deepest-infrared-image-of-universe-yet

I thought fun to see alongside my user image.

I like it that they used a field with a gravitationally magnified part. That's fun enough to post a few times.

Might make a fun user image, but when I had the Deep Field for a few years, it looked just dark to some, so I switched to something just as sublime really.

 

[Leaviathan]

Yes. Any telescope can be aimed at one particular spot. What a scope can see there varies, and Webb ought to be able to take spectral of star light passing through planetary atmospheres for some exoplanets, which will be interesting (and may lead to breathless headlines that should be treated with some caution in my experience).

Yes, any telescope can. But many are hoping it will be able to capture surface details, discover orbital satellites etc..

 

[Halbhh]

Yes, any telescope can. But many are hoping it will be able to capture surface details, discover orbital satellites etc..

Ah, that level of resolution is far beyond its resolving power, sadly.

 

[loveofourlord]

here is a great comparison that has the two images lined up to show the resolution differences.

 

[sjastro]

I look forward to Dr Becky's reaction to the data as much as the next installment from JWST.

 

[Halbhh]

wow. that comparison in post #49 ^^^

 

[loveofourlord]

wow. that comparison in post #49 ^^^

it's interesting how some things are no different in both, some like the red galaxies look like stars in original, and some things are completely missing in original.

 

[Halbhh]

Here's a Reuters live stream

 

[Halbhh]

Interesting the verbal statement that while the Hubble took 2 weeks of continuous observation to image the famous Hubble Deep Field, the person said that Webb did the image they displayed 'before breakfast', which maybe meant overnight or such? I'll be curious to learn more on the relative exposure times, as one person said a number in one article a factor of '100', which I'd need to get more detail on, as Webb has about 6.25 times more mirror area than Hubble, but another factor could be about how Webb images are gathering at a longer wavelength, more infrared, Webb might for instance at least for many objects be in a more intense area of the spectrum, but that's another detail I'll look for later also. (Webb images are like black and white (monochrome is a more accurate word) and then must be colorized to show the general public)

 

[Halbhh]

An article on how Hubble's images that included a lot of the electromagnetic spectrum beyond the range of the human eye both above and below are then made into color images we can see with our eyes:
How they do it: Processing Hubble images from B&W into stunning full-color - RocketSTEM

 

[loveofourlord]

An article on how Hubble's images that included a lot of the electromagnetic spectrum beyond the range of the human eye both above and below are then made into color images we can see with our eyes:
How they do it: Processing Hubble images from B&W into stunning full-color - RocketSTEM

yeah I know that for many the colours are false, because they are showing you infrared/x-ray/radio/visible all combined to show you all the details you couldn't see with naked eye.

 

[Halbhh]

(click on image for a larger version; you can toggle back and forth between the whole image and a close up areas by clicking on that spot, and then again)

 

[Halbhh]

(click on image for a larger, more close up version; you can then move around the larger than your screen image by using the slider bars at bottom and side; another way to look closer at one area is to click on that spot, and you can toggle back and forth between the whole image and the close up areas by clicking again)

 

[Green Sun]

The full list of releases, with the full res images of all the pictures released today is located here:
Science Releases
All the future images releases will also be here, so if you're interested in future pictures, keep an eye on it!

That image of the Carina Nebula Halbhh shared is perhaps one of my favorite pictures of space ever taken. I can't stop looking at it. It's truly, utterly magnificent!

Interesting the verbal statement that while the Hubble took 2 weeks of continuous observation to image the famous Hubble Deep Field, the person said that Webb did the image they displayed 'before breakfast', which maybe meant overnight or such? I'll be curious to learn more on the relative exposure times, as one person said a number in one article a factor of '100', which I'd need to get more detail on, as Webb has about 6.25 times more mirror area than Hubble, but another factor could be about how Webb images are gathering at a longer wavelength, more infrared, Webb might for instance at least for many objects be in a more intense area of the spectrum, but that's another detail I'll look for later also. (Webb images are like black and white (monochrome is a more accurate word) and then must be colorized to show the general public)

I know that for even the "continuous" observations, they do it in different segments. They way I've heard it described is that the photosensors are so sensitive, that they have to occasionally let them "rest" by blocking out the light to avoid damaging them. Then, they'll uncover them again, and take in more light.

And it seems that Webb can do some various bits of science blazingly fast - This spectrum only took about 4 and a half minutes of exposure!
https://twitter.com/astronomolly/status/1546865893254303744

 

[Green Sun]

The other images released today were a set of pairs, showing off the different ways JWST can collect light of different wavelengths.

First, we have two images of the Eight-Burst Nebula - The one on the left taken with the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), while the one on the right is taken with the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI):

You can see that what appears to be a single star in the left picture, is actually a pair of stars, the white dwarf star that created the nebula when it shed it's outer layers, along with it's companion star.

And then we have a picture of a group of galaxies known as Stephan's Quintet - The first image was a composite using both MIRI and NIRCam, while the second is using NIRCam alone:

And here's the MIRI component of the composite image: