This is one of the photos taken by the Webb Space Telescope that was displayed at the White House briefing on the 11th.
US President Biden announced the first full-color deep space image of the universe taken by the James Webb Space Telescope at the White House on the 11th, which captured the "SMACS 0723" galaxy cluster. NASA says this is the most distant and clearest infrared image of the universe yet.
Facing the vast universe, human beings are always full of curiosity: How did the universe originate? Does extraterrestrial life exist? It was with this mission that the James Webb Space Telescope began its space journey. "If you put a grain of sand on your fingertip at arm's length, that's part of the universe you're looking at - just a tiny dot in the universe." NASA Administrator Bill Nelson 11 This is an analogy when introducing the first full-color deep space image of the universe taken by the Webb Space Telescope. The "grain of sand" of
contains a galaxy cluster . NASA said that the image is the "SMACS 0723" galaxy cluster, which contains thousands of galaxies. The image shows the galaxy cluster as it looked about 4.6 billion years ago, and because it is about 4.6 billion light-years away, the light that telescopes now receive is what it emitted so long ago. Part of the
image is light from shortly after the "Big Bang", more than 13 billion years ago. NASA stated that the total mass of the "SMACS 0723" galaxy cluster allows it to produce a "gravitational lens" effect, magnifying the more distant galaxies behind it.
Associate Professor of the Department of Astronomy at Tsinghua University Cai Zheng once said when talking about the Webb Space Telescope that some of the light it detects now comes from extremely distant galaxies. For example, the light that was emitted 13 billion years ago has only been detected now. Captured by telescopes, the universe was still in its infancy at that time, so humans can hope to see what the universe looked like in its infancy through telescopes.
This image allows humans to see this tiny dot in the universe with unprecedented clarity. Sasseroff, an astronomer at Harvard University in the United States, said that at first glance at this image, he thought "we have seen this before", but after carefully looking at the details of the image, he realized that this is a very beautiful result and "completely worth the wait."
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Webb Space Telescope
After multiple delays, the Webb Space Telescope was launched from the Kourou Space Center in French Guiana on December 25, 2021. It is currently in orbit around the second Lagrangian point of the Sun-Earth system, about 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth. According to NASA, the Webb Space Telescope is the largest and most powerful space telescope built by the agency so far. Its main mirror has a diameter of 6.5 meters, is composed of 18 huge hexagonal sub-mirrors, and is equipped with 5 layers of expandable The total cost of the sun visor is approximately US$10 billion. The Webb Space Telescope was jointly researched and developed by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. It is considered the "successor" of the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Webb Space Telescope mission has four main goals: to find the first galaxies born in the universe; to study various stages of galaxy evolution; to observe the formation of stars and planetary systems; and to determine the physics of planetary systems including the solar system’s planetary systems. , chemical properties, and study the possibility of life in other planetary systems.
(Original title: Look! “A grain of sand” contains a galaxy cluster. The Webb Space Telescope’s first full-color deep space image of the universe is released)
Source: Beijing Evening News According to Xinhua News Agency
Process Editor: u011
