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Forbes Argentina.All rights reserved.The James Webb Space Telescope was only fully operational for a month, but in that time, it allowed astronomers to observe the universe like never before and changed the way we see the cosmos.Often described as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, Webb launched on December 25, 2021, after more than two decades in development.Since then, the $10 billion telescope has traveled more than a million miles from Earth and is now parked in a gravitationally stable orbit, collecting infrared light.By gathering infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye, Webb can cut through cosmic dust and see into the distant past, back to the first 400 million years after the Big Bang.Since the telescope released its first batch of images in July, it has inundated researchers with observations of distant cosmic objects.For astronomers, these images are just the beginning.See some of the most impressive images shared in the telescope's first month of observations.The first look at what Webb was able to capture was a "deep field" image, a long-exposure observation of a region of the sky, which allows the telescope to capture light from extremely faint distant objects.If you were to hold a grain of sand at arm's length, that would represent the speck of universe you see in this image, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told President Joe Biden at a White House briefing on July 11.For this deep-field image, Webb pointed his powerful infrared camera at SMACS 0723, a massive group of galaxy clusters that act like a magnifying glass for objects behind them.The light rays are galaxies stretched out by SMACS 0723's powerful gravitational pull, a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.The image took less than a day to capture, according to NASA.One of the main goals of the new telescope is to find galaxies so distant that their light travels almost the entire history of the universe until it reaches Webb.NASA says that Webb is capable of looking further than other telescopes, such as Hubble, and discovering galaxies dating back to the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang.Astronomers have already detected what appears to be one of the most distant galaxies we have ever seen.In a study published in the Arxiv preprint service on July 25, researchers observed a galaxy, called CEERS-93316, that they believe arose 235 million years after the Big Bang, making it the oldest galaxy ever observed. .Also in July, astronomers discovered another distant, rotating collection of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity.The galaxy, known as GLASS-z13, is 13.5 billion years old, dating to 300 million years after the Big Bang.To confirm the age of both galaxies, researchers will need to make follow-up spectroscopic observations.In August, the Webb Telescope captured a snapshot of the Cartwheel Galaxy in more detail than ever before.Located 500 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor, the Cartwheel Galaxy is a rare ring galaxy that formed after a collision between a large spiral galaxy and a smaller one, giving it the appearance of a cartwheel.It has two rings: a bright inner ring and a colorful outer ring that ripples outward from the middle of the collision.The outer ring has been expanding from the center of the collision for about 440 million years.When it expands and hits the surrounding gas, stars are formed.In the photo above, pockets of star formation appear as blue dots in red dust devils.To the left of the Cartwheel Galaxy, Webb captured two other galaxies in the image above.The Cartwheel Galaxy was "presumably a normal galaxy like the Milky Way before its collision" and will continue to change shape and structure in the future, NASA said in a news release on August 2.The new image reveals details about star formation and the black hole at the galaxy's center, and sheds light on how the galaxy has evolved over billions of years, the space agency said.Jupiter and its moon Europa, left, are seen through the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam instrument.Although the space telescope's infrared gaze allows astronomers to peer across staggering cosmic distances, it can also image closer and more familiar objects.In July, NASA released a series of new Webb images showing Jupiter in amazing detail.Alongside the gas giant are its moons Europa, Thebe and Metis.Scientists believe that Europa has a saltwater ocean, far below its thick ice cap, that could harbor extraterrestrial life.Astronomers also hope the Webb telescope will reveal whether distant worlds harbor atmospheres that could support life."With the James Webb Space Telescope, we can explore the chemical composition of other worlds' atmospheres, and whether there are signs in it that we can only explain by life," said Lisa Kaltenegger, professor of astronomy at Cornell University and director of the Carl Sagan Institute previously told Insider.There are 70 planets scheduled for study in Webb's first year.As part of his first batch of observations, Webb captured the signature of water, along with previously undetected evidence of clouds and haze, in the atmosphere of WASP-96 b, a hot gas giant planet orbiting a distant star like our sun."This is an incredible moment in our exploration of the cosmos," said Lisa Kaltenegger, adding: "Are we alone? This incredible space telescope is the first tool to collect enough light for us to begin to solve this fundamental question."Terms and conditions |Legal |© 2022. Forbes Argentina.All rights reserved.