With just a few days to go, project partners will unveil the first full-color images and spectroscopic data captured by the observatory. The agency has shed a little more light on what to expect by revealing the JWST’s original list of cosmic goals.
One of them is the Carina Nebula, about 7,600 light-years away. According to NASA, it is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky and contains stars many times larger than the Sun. Another nebula the telescope has captured is the Southern Ring. Located about 2,000 light-years from Earth, this is a planetary nebula – it’s an expanding cloud of gas surrounding a dying star.
Closer to home is gas planet WASP-96 b, nearly 1,150 light-years away and about half the mass of Jupiter. NASA will take a look at the planet’s light spectrum data. Much further away from here is Stephan’s quintet, about 290 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. This is the first compact galaxy group, discovered back in 1877. It includes five galaxies, four of which “are locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters,” NASA said.
Also on Tuesday, NASA will reveal imagery for SMACS 0723. “Massive galaxy clusters in the foreground magnify and distort the light from objects behind them, allowing a deep look into the extremely distant and intrinsically faint galaxy populations,” NASA said.
A committee of experts from NASA, ESA, CSA and the Space Telescope Science Institute spent five years determining the initial targets for Webb’s instruments. Full-color images and spectroscopic data captured by JSWT are revealed. You can view them.
This is an important step for JWST as it marks the official start of the observatory’s general scientific operations. The goal is to provide us with more detailed images and information about the earliest stars and galaxies, as well as potentially habitable exoplanets. , it took several months for the JWST to reach its destination and be fully operational. We’re about to find out what the Observatory is capable of.
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