When the James Webb Space Telescope started late last year, astronomers bestowed on him an infinite number of missions. I say infinity because the ultimate goal This engineering marvel isn’t just about answering every question we have about the universe. It is meant to answer questions no mortal human thought to ask.
But before we move on to that stunning end goal, here’s our brilliant new lens dutifully strutting through tasks We have given it, one of which is to penetrate veils of cosmic gas and dust and reveal secret stellar escapades within. Things that standard optical telescopes like Hubble can’t always see.
Behold, on Tuesday the JWST decoded a shimmering scene from behind one of space’s dark curtains, a dusty canopy enveloping a pair of merging galaxies some 270 million light-years from Earth.
The JWST caught a glimpse of a twinkling, twinkling cosmic scene.
ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, L Armus, A Evans
What am I looking at?
We have two empires called IC 1623 A and B stuck on a collision course through space and time. Located in the constellation of Cetus, they have long been of interest to scientists for a number of reasons.
Perhaps most strikingly, they are in the process of forming a supermassive black hole — a gigantic void with enough gravitational pull to warp the very fabric of our universe as we know it.
But this burgeoning den of destruction is expected to be adorned with a chain of light.
The ultra-high intensity of galaxy merger IC 1623 also spurred the emergence of a vibrant star-forming region nearby. It’s called a starburst, and this one in particular is creating new stars at a rate more than 20 times that of the Milky Way, according to the European Space Agency.
and This caught the JWST.
Hubble has already given us a preliminary glimpse of IC 1623 A and B, but astronomy’s latest contract with space has pierced the duo’s cosmic veil, just as scientists had hoped from the start. In doing so, it has shown us the luminous core of this merger and presented humanity with a complete, fascinating picture of IC 1623, rather than a hidden picture with a central region left to our imagination.
Here is Hubble’s view of the merger of galaxies IC 1623 A and B. It’s much less sparkling because the central regions of these kingdoms are obscured by dark dust.
ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, L Armus, A Evans
Why can the JWST do what Hubble can’t?
Two words: infrared imaging.
All light coming from outer space can be categorized in a type of diagram known as the electromagnetic spectrum. Different wavelengths of light, which also lead to different colors in our eyes, are in different places. On the one hand you have redder wavelengths and on the other hand you have bluer ones.
But if you go beyond the red side of the electromagnetic spectrum, as some light actually does, you get to infrared light.
Infrared light is essentially invisible to the human eye, unlike regular red light. That means it’s also invisible to instruments that behave like human eyes, even if they’re really powerful versions like the Hubble Space Telescope.
But infrared light is exactly the kind of light emanating from stars in most clouds of dense cosmic dust, like the veil surrounding IC 1623. So to find out what’s going on inside, we need a telescope that detects infrared light. And that is JWST.
This infographic illustrates the spectrum of electromagnetic energy, specifically highlighting the ranges discovered by NASA’s Hubble, Spitzer, and Webb Space Telescopes. Spitzer is now retired and was not as high tech as the JWST.
NASA and J. Olmsted [STScI]
As an aside, the light from stars and other phenomena that are very, very far from Earth also reaches our planet as infrared light. For this reason, the JWST is willing to bring us information about the away Universe as it was at the beginning of time, information invisible to us and the Hubble Space Telescope. More about this here.
Regarding IC 1623, ESA states that “Webb’s infrared sensitivity and impressive resolution at these wavelengths allow it to see through the dust and resulted in the spectacular image above, a combination of MIRI and NIRCam images,” regarding two of JWST’s high-tech instruments.
Another Easter egg in this image, as with all JWST images, are the eight-pointed diffractive peaks you see right in the center. (It looks like six spikes, but there are two mini-spikes moving horizontally through the center. They’re hard to see). All JWST images have this signature, unlike Hubble’s four-pointed version.
Here’s an overview of what the diffraction peaks of the JWST look like. You will see these in every JWST image!
NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI), Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
In general, these spikes are very noticeable when there is a lot of light in an image, which explains why the telescope’s latest image of two galactic nuclei has its bright central snowflake.
Hopefully the next time JWST focuses its lens it will be on one of those landmarks with evidence of something we never asked about.
#NASAs #Webb #Telescope #reveals #shimmering #scene #invisible #Hubble
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