Posted on 07/08/2022 7:05:23 AM PDT by Red Badger
NASA has a provided a tantalizing teaser photo ahead of the highly-anticipated release next week of the first deep-space images from the James Webb Telescope – an instrument so powerful it can peer back into the origins of the Universe.
An engineering test image. (NASA, CSA, and FGS team)
The US$10 billion observatory – launched in December last year and now orbiting the Sun a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from Earth – can look where no telescope has looked before thanks to its enormous primary mirror and instruments that focus on infrared, allowing it to peer through dust and gas.
The first fully formed pictures are set for release on July 12, but NASA provided an engineering test photo on Wednesday – the result of 72 exposures over 32 hours that shows a set of distant stars and galaxies.
The image has some "rough-around-the-edges" qualities, NASA said in a statement, but is still "among the deepest images of the universe ever taken" and offers a "tantalizing glimpse" at what will be revealed in the coming weeks, months, and years.
"When this image was taken, I was thrilled to clearly see all the detailed structure in these faint galaxies," said Neil Rowlands, program scientist for Webb's Fine Guidance Sensor at Honeywell Aerospace.
Jane Rigby, Webb's operations scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said the "faintest blobs in this image are exactly the types of faint galaxies that Webb will study in its first year of science operations."
"" The engineering test image. (NASA, CSA, and FGS team)
NASA administrator Bill Nelson said last week that Webb is able to gaze further into the cosmos than any telescope before it.
"It's going to explore objects in the solar system and atmospheres of exoplanets orbiting other stars, giving us clues as to whether potentially their atmospheres are similar to our own," he said.
"It may answer some questions that we have: Where do we come from? What more is out there? Who are we? And of course, it's going to answer some questions that we don't even know what the questions are."
Webb's infrared capabilities allow it to see back in time to the Big Bang, which happened 13.8 billion years ago.
Because the Universe is expanding, light from the earliest stars shifts from the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths it was emitted in, to longer infrared wavelengths – which Webb is equipped to detect at an unprecedented resolution.
At present, the earliest cosmological observations date to within 330 million years of the Big Bang, but with Webb's capacities, astronomers believe they will easily break the record.
Ping!....................
Are the black dots quasars?
HOW GREAT THOU ART!
Carl Boberg, 1886
Verse 1
O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the works Thy hands have made,
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy pow’r thru-out the universe displayed!
Chorus
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Verse 2
When thru the woods and forest glades I wander
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees,
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur
And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze,
Chorus
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Verse 3
And when I think that God, His Son not sparing,
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in –
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin!
Chorus
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Verse 4
When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart!
Then I shall bow in humble adoration
And there proclaim, my God, how great Thou art!
Chorus
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
That is where the IR light intensity overwhelms the sensors...........
I seem to recall a dusty black covered book lying around here that answered these questions if I could just find it.
Printed by a guy named Gideon?
They’re doing it to me again. NOTHING would “Break my brain”. My brain just isn’t that fragile.
They can’t help but ask stupid philosophical questions. Like maybe this will explain where we came from? The truth is that the more scientists learn about the universe the less they understand about how it could’ve been created why it was created why it exists in the first place etc.
The phrase "billions and billions" still doesn't do it justice.
I can’t tell you how many times I sang that song in church with my parents over the years. Thanks for posting.
God particle????
Yeah, these guys sound like the Supreme, who cannot define what a woman is...
Cool.
I would have preferred quasars, however.
“My God, it’s full of stars”
p
No, mine’s the kingly version. James as I recall.
Any disk-shaped objects in the image is another galaxy. Thousands of them in this one image alone.
You just haven’t been called by a unpreferred pronoun. That is so humiliating. Brain breaking. You’d need therapy if they said it to you. People have total breakdowns over it.
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