This is the first image released by the PEARLS (Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science) project, showing the very early galaxies in the sky in the northern yellow polar region, captured by Webb’s near-infrared camera (NIRCam) in 8 colors of near-infrared light, and The Hubble Space Telescope combines 3 colors of ultraviolet and visible light.
▲ The first image of the PEARLS project. (Source:ESA)
In unprecedented detail, sophistication, and high-resolution, this beautiful image reveals the galaxy-filled universe and the stars of our Milky Way galaxy, many of which have never been seen by large ground-based telescopes or by Hubble. The NIRCam observations will be combined with spectra from the Webb Near Infrared Imager and Seamless Slit Spectrometer (NIRISS) to search for faint objects with spectral emission lines that allow for more accurate distance estimates.
The images taken by Webb far exceeded expectations. The researchers were amazed that there was a treasure trove of distant galaxies hidden in this region. They not only obtained direct clues to the gathering and growth processes of galaxies, but also saw celestial bodies that they had never thought of seeing with their own eyes, such as around distant elliptical galaxies. Individual globular clusters, star-forming knots in spiral galaxies, and thousands of faint, faint galaxies in the background. The population density and total amount of light produced by very faint infrared-limited galaxies was measured, which is much dimmer than the very dark infrared sky measured between galaxies.
The diffuse light measured between stars and galaxies has cosmological implications, as it encodes the history of the universe, the researchers say. It is expected that continuous monitoring of this region throughout the duration of the Webb mission for objects that move, change in brightness, or have brief bursts will enable the discovery of time-varying objects such as distant supernova explosions, bright accreting gas around black holes in active galaxies . The research results will be published in the “Astronomical Journal” journal.
(This article is reproduced with the authorization of Taipei Planetarium; source of the first image: ESA)
