690 images of the sky through a straw

We are starting to run out of metaphors for the photos of the James-Webb space telescope. How regarding, for example, looking at a portion of the sky corresponding to what you can through a straw?

In mid-August, a team of astronomers published 690 images each corresponding to a different portion of the sky, all representing the equivalent of a tenth of a full moon… Or the equivalent of the portion of the sky that you can see through a straw.

Launched at Christmas 2021, the James-Webb space telescope is stationed at Lagrange 2 point, 1.5 million km from Earth, where the gravitational forces of the Earth and the Sun cancel each other out. (The planet Mars is more than 200 million km from Earth.) Illustration: NASA

See up to 13 billion light-years away

But a straw through which one might dive to see up to 13 billion light-years. Each “straw” therefore shows thousands, if not tens of thousands, of galaxies through different stages of their existence.

The team is called the Cosmic Evolution Early Realease Science Survey (CEERS), and is just one of many teams around the world that have booked observing time on the James-Webb (JWST).