Here is the ancient light of galaxies from the early Universe. It has traveled for over 13 billion years and was collected by the great mirror of the James Webb space telescope, the most powerful instrument ever launched. It is his first color photo and already sets a record, which is why it was chosen to show what the new super telescope is capable of, heir to the glorious Hubble: the “deepest” infrared photo of the Universe. More than a presentation is a ceremony, the location chosen to celebrate this historic moment was in fact the White House and the “master of ceremonies” were the president of the United States, Joe Biden and his deputy, Kamala Harris. The photo, taken in infrared, is the first to be disclosed among those made by the scientific instruments of James Webb in full operation.
The subject had been announced by NASA along with a series of targets. But it was decided to offer a preview. Show SMACS 0723: Groups of very massive galaxy clusters. All this mass deforms space-time in such an intense way as to bend and amplify, like a lens, the image of the objects behind it, along the same line of observation but much, much further away. It’s those reddish curves between brighter galaxies. The effect is called, in fact, “gravitational lens” and was predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity. And he exalted, bringing it to us, the light that shone just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was still a child.
Even Hubble has immortalized the same corner of the sky, without however getting to see what his successor saw, destined to revolutionize our knowledge of the Universe. To make this “shot”, the James Webb observed the same point in the sky for 12 hours and surpassed the performance obtained by Hubble’s “ultra-deep fields”, which also took weeks. “The scenario of this image – so defined – corresponds to a piece of sky the size of a grain of sand on the tip of a finger,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson. According to Biden, James Webb is proof that “we must invest in science and technology” and that “there is nothing beyond our capabilities”.
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The result of the collaboration between NASA itself, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian (CSA), after six delicate months in which engineers and scientists carried out all the tests to make sure that everything worked perfectly, the James Webb it can finally reveal to the world what it is capable of. That of the “ultra deep field”, the observation of the most distant objects of the Cosmos, is one of his specialties, observing the sky in infrared. And certainly the primacy made by this snapshot will not last long, the James Webb will soon bring new even more “profound” visions.
https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2022/01/09/news/james_webb_