NASA has revealed the stunning first image collected by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The new telescope is mankind’s most advanced imaging telescope and the project is more than 20 years in the making.
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President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were on hand for the reveal of the first image.
Harris serves as the chair of the National Space Council.
“Sneak a peek at the deepest & sharpest infrared image of the early universe ever taken — all in a day’s work for the Webb telescope,” Nasa wrote of the image.
“Literally, capturing it took less than a day! This is Webb’s first image released as we begin to Unfold the Universe.”
The James Webb Space Telescope launched on Christmas Day in 2021.
It has spent the last seven months parked 1,000,000 miles from Earth, unfolding its sunshield, calibrating the tech onboard, and adjusting to the challenging temperatures of space.
Its aim is to uncover the hidden depths of our universe, peering at the faint light of early stars and galaxies created after the Big Bang some 250 million years.
The first images captured by the James Webb were presented on Nasa TV and on Nasa’s socials during a speech by President Biden on Monday.
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Additional images are expected to be released on Tuesday at 10.30am during a joint event in Maryland with Nasa, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
A few engineers got a sneak peek at the images that are going public this week.
“What I have seen moved me, as a scientist, as an engineer, and as a human being,” Nasa deputy administrator Pam Melroy said.
Some excited fans had different theories on what the James Webb has been snapping photos of.
“I know it’s fantastically and arguably, uh, a bit terrifying, but it would be incredible if the JWST could find some alien mega-structures,” one Twitter user wrote.
“Imagine they release the JWST images and there’s f***in massive aliens inside the nebulas thatd be so cool,” another user added.
The James Webb Space Telescope has been angled to take images of the Carina and Southern Ring Nebulae, a gaseous exoplanet, and a galaxy cluster.
Hank Green, an author and trusted science vlogger, told his 1.2million Twitter followers that “the promise of Webb has always been to see farther away (and thus farther back in time) than we have ever seen.”
Indeed, the images from Webb are glimpses into the past – the light from deep space has traveled to the lens of the James Webb over light-years of expanse.
The same principle applies to the Sun – light from the Sun takes a bit more than eight minutes to reach Earth.
Engadget reported that Nasa plans to reveal just one image today and the remaining images will be made public tomorrow.
More than 30 years ago, President George HW Bush delivered a speech touting a new chapter of space exploration that led to the launch and development of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Today, President Biden has turned the page once again to an even more promising age of space exploration and imaging.
