Views of space keep getting better. NASA’s $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope released four new science images on July 12, including newborn stars sparkling through dramatic “cliffs” of gas and galaxies interacting in a complex cosmic dance. A day earlier, astronomers marveled at its very first image, a stunning deep dive into distant space. Webb observes the universe in infrared wavelengths, giving it a different view than many other observatories, such as the Hubble Space Telescope. Webb’s 20-foot-wide mirror is the largest ever launched into space, and the combination of the large mirror and its infrared detection capabilities gives Webb an unprecedented view of many astronomical phenomena.
This includes stars and shock waves generated by colliding galaxies in a group of five known as Stephan’s Quintet, 90 million parsecs away in the constellation Pegasus. Images of the galaxy cluster collected by Webb reveal millions of young stars formed by the collision of gas and dust, as well as the vast tails left behind by one of the galaxies, NGC 7318B, as it makes its way through the cluster. “It really shows the type of interaction that drives the evolution of galaxies,” says Giovanna Giardino, an astronomer at the European Space Agency. And that’s not all. “What was surprising to me about Stephan’s quintet was how many galaxies there are in the background,” says Jane Rigby, Webb Operations Project Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Another cosmic action appears in a new Webb image of the Carina Nebula, a star-forming region about 2,330 parsecs away. The large, hot stars at the center of the nebula shower it with radiation that creates a gaseous cavity, surrounded by dramatic peaks and valleys and nicknamed the “cosmic cliffs.” Webb’s infrared capabilities allowed him to see through the dust that often obscures this view for other telescopes. The observatory also revealed brilliant pins of light in the nebula, which are newborn stars. “There’s just so much going on here—it’s so beautiful,” says Amber Straughn, an astrophysicist at Goddard. At the opposite end of a star’s life cycle is the Southern Ring Nebula, a glowing shell of gas and dust that has been ejected by a star at the end of its life.
Located about 770 parsecs away in the constellation Vela, the nebula displays rings of material, each ejected during a specific episode from a dying star. “You’re seeing what the star was doing just before it formed this planetary nebula,” says Klaus Pontoppidan, Webb’s project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. “I find it fascinating because it’s like geological layers and you can see the history of his last moments.”
Atmosphere of a distant planet WASP-96b
Webb’s high resolution allowed him to pick out intricate details in these shells, as well as reveal a second star orbiting the main one. Together, these stars illuminate the surrounding nebula like the Sun shining through patchy cloudsPerhaps the least visually striking but scientifically most convincing image of NASA’s release is a chemical analysis, or spectrum, of the atmosphere of a distant planet known as WASP-96b. This planet is about half the size of Jupiter, but orbits its star in just 3.5 days, meaning its surface is extremely hot. Webb observed the planet as it passed across the face of its star, allowing light from the star to pass through the planet’s atmosphere and allow scientists to chemically analyze it. They spotted a water footprint in WASP-96b’s atmosphere, indicating that it is indeed a steamy place.
The spectrum is “simply spectacular,” says Christopher Evans, the European Space Agency’s Webb Project Scientist. “People have been trying to do [spectroscopy] from the ground for years … and suddenly it’s right there, and that’s the first step.” It’s the first of many spectra of exoplanets that Webb will collect — a field of research that didn’t exist when the telescope was invented, before any planets outside the Solar System were known. And yet exoplanets now promise to be one of the most important areas of Webb’s discovery. Studying the spectra from these planetary bodies can reveal how friendly other worlds might be to life. “Can we use this instrument to see something because people want to know when are we going to see the next Earth?” says John Mather, Webb’s principal project scientist at Goddard.
All four of the telescope’s instruments have been fully operational and are now doing science. Astronomers are excited to have this new and immensely capable observatory, which promises to enable discoveries of a wide range of astronomical phenomena. “We have this huge laboratory to learn about different aspects and different regions of the universe,” says Hannah Wakeford, an astronomer at the University of Bristol. Webb is a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. Launched in December after more than two decades of development, it observes the universe from a place in space on the far side of the moon, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
Source Reference: Alexandra Witze, Stunning new Webb images: baby stars, colliding galaxies and hot exoplanets, Nature News (2022), https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01931-5
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Image Credit: NASA Website, https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-reveals-cosmic-cliffs-glittering-landscape-of-star-birth
