NASA to unveil more of Webb space telescope's first full-color images

Agencies | Washington

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Following a presidential sneak peek of a galaxy-studded image from deep in the cosmos, NASA was due on Tuesday to unveil more of its initial showcase from the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most powerful orbital observatory ever launched.

The first batch of full-color, high-resolution pictures, which took weeks to render from raw telescope data, were selected by NASA to provide compelling early images from Webb's major areas of inquiry and a preview of science missions ahead. 

The $9 billion infrared telescope, built for NASA by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp , is expected to revolutionize astronomy by allowing scientists to peer farther than before and with greater clarity into the cosmos, to the dawn of the known universe.

A partnership between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, the Webb was launched on Christmas Day, 2021, and reached its destination in solar orbit nearly 1 million miles from Earth a month later.

Once there, the telescope underwent a months-long process to unfurl all of its components, including a sun shield the size of a tennis court, and to align its mirrors and calibrate its instruments.

With Webb now finely tuned and fully focused, astronomers will embark on a competitively selected list of science projects exploring the evolution of galaxies, the life cycles of stars, the atmospheres of distant exoplanets and the moons of our outer solar system.

The introductory assortment of pictures had been a closely guarded secret until Friday, when the space agency posted a list of five celestial subjects chosen for its big reveal on Tuesday at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. 

PRESIDENTIAL PEEK

U.S. President Joe Biden got a jump on the unveiling with his own White House briefing on Monday to release the very first photo - an image of a galaxy cluster dubbed SMACS 0723 revealing the most detailed glimpse of the early universe recorded to date.

The debut collection includes another galaxy cluster known as Stephan's Quintet, which was first discovered in 1877 and encompasses several galaxies described by NASA as "locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters."

NASA will also present Webb's first spectrographic analysis of an exoplanet - one roughly half the mass of Jupiter that lies more than 1,100 light years away - revealing the molecular signatures of filtered light passing through its atmosphere.