10/6/2023 0 Comments Uranus nasa images![]() Webb also has spotted the earliest known supermassive black hole powering a quasar that was blazing away 570 million years after the birth of the universe. It's a record that likely won't stand for long with several other candidates awaiting confirmation. In its first year of operation, Webb has looked deeper into space and further back in time than ever before, detecting at least one galaxy that was shining just 390 million years after the Big Bang. NASA was able to release five initial images on July 12, 2022, that clearly demonstrated the enormous power of the most expensive science probe ever built. But six-and-a-half months after launch, Webb was fully calibrated and operating as designed. ![]() The telescope's sheer complexity prompted widespread tension among the astronomical community. If, that is, everything worked exactly as planned. Webb was designed to push well past that milestone. Even so, Hubble has detected galaxies dating back to within a half billion years or so of the Big Bang, earlier than astronomers expected. That light can't be seen by current ground-based telescopes or even the iconic Hubble, which was designed primarily to study visible and near-infrared wavelengths. The telescope and its four instruments are optimized to capture light from the first stars and galaxies that began shining in the aftermath of the Big Bang birth of the cosmos, light that has been stretched into the infrared region of the spectrum by the expansion of space itself over the past 13.8 billion years. Six hexagonal side segments of Webb's 21.3-foot-wide primary mirror then were deployed and the optical system precisely aligned to produce razor-sharp images. ![]() On the way to Lagrange Point 2, scientists and engineers held their collective breath as the telescope unfurled a complex tennis court-size sunshade to cool the observatory to within 50 degrees of absolute zero. The most complex civilian science probe ever built, Webb was folded up to fit inside the Ariane 5's nose cone. It took a month for the telescope to reach its planned parking place a million miles from Earth on the far side of the moon's orbit - Lagrange Point 2 - where it now circles the sun in gravitational lockstep with Earth, providing the cold, dark environment needed for mission success. The James Webb Space Telescope was launched atop an Ariane 5 rocket on Christmas Day, 2021, from the European Space Agency's Kourou, French Guiana, launch site. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (STScI) Every new image is a new discovery." A zoomed-in view showing details in the swirling clouds of gas illuminated by blazing young stars. Said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson: "In just one year, the James Webb Space Telescope has transformed humanity's view of the cosmos, peering into dust clouds and seeing light from faraway corners of the universe for the very first time.
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