SPACE – After a first image revealed by US President Joe Biden on Monday July 11, the Nasa finally unveiled, this Tuesday, July 12, all the photos taken by the telescope James Webb. Stunning shots of galaxies and nebulae, as you can see in the video at the top of the articleand which mark the beginning of scientific research awaited for years by astronomers around the world.
Breathtaking images
During an hour-long presentation, the American space agency unveiled the images one by one. First there was a Southern Ring Nebula: a huge cloud of gas surrounding a dying star. Then the “Stephan Quintet”, a group of galaxies interacting with each other. And finally the most impressive, the Carina Nebula, located regarding 7,600 light-years away, which illustrates the formation of stars. It is home to many massive stars, which are several times the size of our Sun.
“Each image is a new discovery,” Nasa boss Bill Nelson said in the opening. “Each will give humanity a view of the Universe we’ve never had before.”
Discovering exoplanets
The latest cosmic object whose sighting was revealed on Tuesday is a exoplanetthat is to say a planet in orbit around a star other than our Sun, one of James Webb’s main lines of research.
It was not actually photographed, but analyzed by spectroscopy, a technique used to determine the chemical composition of a distant object. In this case, WASP-96 b, a giant planet composed mainly of gas.
James Webb had been launched into space regarding six months ago on Christmas Day from French Guiana by a rocket Ariane 5. Resulting from an immense international collaboration, and in project since the 1990s, it is stationed 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth.
The publication of these first images marks the beginning of an immense scientific adventure, which should extend over many years and transform our understanding of the Universe.
Researchers around the world have reserved observation time with James Webb, whose program for its first year of operation has already been carefully determined by a committee of specialists, and made public.
The telescope has enough fuel to operate for 20 years. Some 20,000 people have worked on this project around the world, making a huge international collaboration.
See also on The HuffPost: Relive the James Webb Telescope Liftoff into Space with the Ariane Rocket
