Beyond being impressive, the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope provide a wealth of scientific insights. These are some of the things scientists hope to learn.
In the deep. The telescope’s first photograph released Monday offered the sharpest, deepest infrared image of the distant universe yet, known as Webb’s First Deep Field. The white circles and ellipses are from the foreground group of galaxies called SMACS 0723, as it appeared more than 4.6 billion years ago, regarding the time our Sun formed as well. The reddish arcs arise from light from ancient galaxies that they have traveled more than 13 billion years, curving around the foreground group, which acts as a gravitational lens.
NASA astrophysicist Amber Straughn said she was struck by “the amazing detail that can be seen in some of these galaxies.” “They just show up! There’s so much more detail, it’s like watching in high definition.” According to Straughn, perhaps the most exciting of all is traveling into the unknown. The Hubble Telescope played a pivotal role in the discovery that dark energy causes the universe to expand at an ever-increasing rate, “so it’s hard to imagine what we might learn with this 100 times more powerful instrument.”
Jane Rigby, also an astrophysicist at NASA, added that the image may teach us more regarding the mysterious dark matter, which is believed to comprise 85% of the matter in the universe and is the main cause of the cosmic magnifying effect.
The composite image, taken from a 12.5-hour exposure, is considered a trial. With a longer exposure time, Webb should break records for seeing the first few hundred million years following the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.
Search for habitable planets. Webb captured the watermark, along with previously undetected evidence of clouds and haze, in the atmosphere of a hot giant planet called “WASP-96 b,” which orbits a distant star like our Sun. WASP-96 b is one of more than 5,000 confirmed exoplanets in the Milky Way. But what really excites astronomers is the prospect of pointing Webb at smaller rocky worlds, like our own Earth, to search for atmospheres and bodies of liquid water that might support life.
The death of a star. The telescope’s cameras captured a stellar graveyard in the South Ring Nebula. The image revealed in great detail the faint, dying star at its center that is covered in dust.
Astronomers will use Webb to dig into details regarding “planetary nebulae” like these, which eject clouds of gas and dust. The expulsion of gas and clouds stops following a few tens of thousands of years, and once the material disperses into space, new stars can form.
A cosmic dance. Stephan’s Quintet is a grouping of five galaxies found in the constellation Pegasus. Webb was able to peer through the clouds of dust and gas at the center of the galaxy to obtain new data, such as the speed and composition of gas flows near its supermassive black hole. Four of the galaxies are in close proximity to each other and locked in a “cosmic dance” of repeated close encounters.
By studying this group, “you learn how galaxies collide and merge,” said cosmologist John Mather, noting that the Milky Way itself was created from 1,000 smaller galaxies. Understanding the black hole better will also give us a better understanding of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, which is shrouded in dust.
Stellar nursery. Perhaps the most beautiful image captured is that of the “Cosmic Cliffs” of the Carina nebula, a stellar nursery. Here, Webb revealed previously invisible star-forming regions for the first time, which will tell us more regarding why stars of a certain mass form, and what determines the number of formations in a particular region.
They may look like mountains, but the tallest of the craggy peaks is seven light-years high, and the yellow structures are made of huge hydrocarbon molecules, said Klaus Pontoppidan, Webb project scientist. In addition to being the stuff of stars, nebular material might also be our origin.
“This may be the way the universe transports carbon, the carbon we are made of, to planets that may be habitable for life,” Pontoppidan explained.