A sequel that is as good as the original is a rare treat, but the second set of images released from the James Webb Space Telescope certainly lived up to the high expectations set by the evening of July 10th's thrilling deep field reveal. In fact, it outperformed it by leaps and bounds.
President Joe Biden's announcement of the first image was unimpressive, but the image itself? Magnificent. It is known as "Webb's First Deep Field," and it provides astronomers with a view of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723.
What you're looking at is a tiny patch of the Southern Hemisphere sky, about the size of a grain of sand held up to the heavens, but it's packed with thousands of galaxies, ranging from spirals and ellipticals to simple pinpricks of light only a few pixels wide. And, thanks to a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, it gives us the most detailed and ancient view of the universe yet – as well as concrete proof of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Isn't that a lot to live up to?
Even though the images released on Tuesday do not go quite as far back in space and time, they are undeniably profound, equal in beauty to the First Deep Field and intricately woven with exquisite cosmic detail.
Three major images make up the JWST's first full-color set.
Two focus on nebulas, huge clouds of dust and gas within which stars are sometimes born, and the other analyzes a region known as Stephan's Quintet, a frightening corner of the cosmos where five galaxies are locked in an ultimately fatal dance.
Then there's the spectral data from WASP-96 b, a really hot, giant, gassy exoplanet whose atmosphere is revealed in unprecedented detail. This isn't your typical image, but rather something far more valuable. It's a spectral dataset that helps us understand what it's like to stand on a spaceborne object rather than what it looks like. And, as they say, the book is frequently superior to the film.
Let's go over each one in detail and explain why the JWST's second batch of cosmic goodies is just as groundbreaking as the first.
Nebulae are massive clouds of dust and gas that exist at either end of the life of a star. Some are home to budding stars, while others are the result of their explosive deaths. But in both cases, nebulas are responsible for some of the most stunning images we have of our universe – and their magnificence is only enhanced by the JWST's lens, the most powerful infrared imager we've ever worked with.
You can read more about how the JWST's infrared imaging works, but the basic idea is that it can access light emitted across the cosmos by stars, galaxies, and other luminescent objects that is trapped in a region of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes cannot see. And, in the case of nebulas, that "hidden" light happens to be the main kind shooting through their dust clouds from whatever lies within.
This means that our pupils, as well as massive telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope, are unable to penetrate nebular curtains of gaseousness. They're veils that usually obscure our view of the bright features within, such as stars that are just bursting to life or those that are dying. The JWST's instruments, on the other hand, can easily get past them using infrared imaging to see what's going on backstage. Furthermore, NASA's next-generation telescope has much (much) better resolution than a telescope like Hubble, capturing the internal nebula show as well as external structure with a sophisticated clarity novel to human eyes.
Keep on eye out for the part 2 of this blog post, and ill see you then! Ciao!