NASA reveals deepest images of universe ever from new telescope

After a sneak peek on Monday, NASA released on Tuesday some stunning new images of deep space taken from its new powerful multi-billion-dollar James Webb Space Telescope.

The pictures released on Tuesday are considered the deepest, infrared images of the universe that have ever been captured.

“Today, we present humanity with a groundbreaking new view of the cosmos from the James Webb Space Telescope – a view the world has never seen before,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “These images show us how Webb will help to uncover the answers to questions we don’t even yet know to ask; questions that will help us better understand our universe and humanity’s place within it.”

“Every image is a new discovery and each will give humanity a view of the humanity that we’ve never seen before.”

The Webb telescope’s use of the infrared light spectrum allows it to see through the cosmic dust and capture light from the far corners of the universe.

The four images released on Tuesday, include:

• Carina Nebula – one of the bright stellar nurseries in the sky, about 7,600 light-years away.
• Stephan’s Quintet – Five galaxies in a cosmic dance, 290 million light-years away. First seen 225 years ago in the constellation Pegasus.
• Southern Ring Nebula – sometimes called “eight-burst.” About 2,500 light-years away, it shows an expanding cloud of gas surrounding a dying star. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.
• WASP-96b – A blueish giant planet. It’s about the size of Saturn and is 1,150 light-years away. A gas planet, it’s not a candidate for life elsewhere but a key target for astronomers.

But Tuesday also marked a big day for Canadian astronomy.

The $9 billion telescope was launched on Dec. 25, 2021, and was built for NASA in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency. After completing a deployment sequence in space, the telescope went through months of commissioning to align its mirrors and calibrated it to its space environment.

Canada’s contributions to Webb

Sarah Gallagher, the science advisor to the president of the CSA, says the stunning images released Tuesday mark just the beginning of an exciting time.

“It was just spectacular because the telescope is absolutely meeting or exceeding expectations. It is going to be able to deliver on all of the exciting science that was promised,” she said of the released of images, many of which are captivating themselves, showing bright hues from various parts of the universe.

Gallagher says the photos give people “the first little taste” of how much data is out there.

Canada’s role in the telescope was a big one.

Gallagher explains the CSA contributed two critical instruments: one fine guidance sensor, and another designed to specifically look through the atmospheres of planets around other stars and measure molecules in those atmospheres.

Canada’s instrument NIRISS on #Webb reveals the distinct signature of water in the atmosphere of a hot, puffy gas giant planet orbiting a distant Sun-like star. It also shows evidence of haze and clouds that previous studies of this planet did not detect. pic.twitter.com/grI52rKqWa

— Canadian Space Agency (@csa_asc) July 12, 2022

The former enables the telescope to take the images.

“It’s got two cameras that look at a field of stars and measure their positions very, very, very precisely, and they make sure that those images are rock-solid still so that you can take advantage of the beautiful image quality of the big mirror,” she said of the sensor.

Canada’s contribution doesn’t come without some benefit to local researchers, either. Gallagher says the Canadian teams that contributed to the telescope are allocated time, given they are instrument scientists. The other benefit is that other Canadian scientists are guaranteed five per cent of the telescope time.

The images released Tuesday have captivated many across the world. The four images initially shared are of the Carina Nebula, Stephan’s Quintet, Southern Ring Nebula, and WASP-96b.

However, the telescope is offering up so much more than stunning photographs. The implications of this development are vast.

“There have been images that are taken in lots of different colours and there have also been spectra, which is when you take the light and you spread it out to look at all of its different colours, and different elements will glow in certain colours — that also tells you what things are made out of. So it’s not just the images that are so exciting, it’s also those sorts of data, the spectra,” Gallagher told CityNews.

While you won’t likely see a UFO with a being waving back at you in Webb’s images, Gallagher notes scientists will be able to search for “the signatures of life” on other planets.

Meanwhile, the CSA is hopeful the data and images shared over the years to come will not only help the scientific community in its research, but also entice young scientists.

“They are visually beautiful. I think a lot of people would look at them and be awed and inspired by how rich and beautiful and interesting the universe is,” Gallagher said of the photographs. “It also is the sort of thing that is, I think, quite inspiring. This was an ambitious, grand project and the Canadian Space Agency and Canadians were partners in this incredibly challenging, incredibly hard thing. Everybody brought their A-game. Technologies had to be invented when this was envisioned because nobody was quite sure how they were going to do it.”

But they did it, with Gallagher pointing out some people working on this project now were just “babies” when the project was in its early stages.

With files from The Associated Press