NASA teases list of first celestial objects imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope

Image: NASA

Next week, NASA will publish the first full-color images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, orJWST. A giant planet outside our Solar System is one of the targets.

The new observatory was launched on Christmas Day in 2021. The field of astrophysics is going to be changed by the collection of light from the first stars and galaxies that formed right after the Big bang. It is designed to study objects throughout our Universe in unprecedented detail, giving us insight into our distant Solar System, planets outside our Cosmic neighborhood, asteroids, exotic stars, and more.

The target objects and regions of space were observed for 120 hours before the first images were taken. We got some hints from NASA, but we didn't know what the first images would be. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science, said that we'd see the light from the atmosphere of a planet outside our Solar System. The deepest image of our Universe has ever been taken, according to NASA administrator Bill Nelson.

We can study up on these destinations before we see them in person. We expect to see a breakdown of the light in the exoplanets atmosphere. An international team of people from NASA, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency, and the Space Telescope Science Institute were involved in selecting the target list for this breakthrough moment.

Thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, we can see some of the targets we have seen before. The mirror of JWST is three times larger than that of Hubble. The images should be more detailed.

The list of targets is provided by NASA.

Carina Nebula. The Carina Nebula is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky, located approximately 7,600 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. Nebulae are stellar nurseries where stars form. The Carina Nebula is home to many massive stars, several times larger than the Sun.

WASP-96 b (spectrum). WASP-96 b is a giant planet outside our solar system, composed mainly of gas. The planet, located nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth, orbits its star every 3.4 days. It has about half the mass of Jupiter, and its discovery was announced in 2014.

Southern Ring Nebula. The Southern Ring, or “Eight-Burst” nebula, is a planetary nebula – an expanding cloud of gas, surrounding a dying star. It is nearly half a light-year in diameter and is located approximately 2,000 light years away from Earth.

Stephan’s Quintet: About 290 million light-years away, Stephan’s Quintet is located in the constellation Pegasus. It is notable for being the first compact galaxy group ever discovered in 1787. Four of the five galaxies within the quintet are locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters.

SMACS 0723: Massive foreground galaxy clusters magnify and distort the light of objects behind them, permitting a deep field view into both the extremely distant and intrinsically faint galaxy populations.

The images will be revealed by NASA on July 12. They are definitely going to be amazing. The deputy administrator of NASA, Pam Melroy, said during a press conference that what she has seen moves her.