The James Webb Space Telescope is going to show the deepest images humanity has ever seen in both time and space.
Video / AP
A sparkling landscape of baby stars. A foamy blue and orange view of a dying star. Five galaxies in a cosmic dance. The splendours of the universe glowed in a new batch of images released from Nasa's powerful new telescope.
The unveiling from the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope began on Monday at the White House with a sneak peek of the first shot — a jumble of distant galaxies that reached deeper into the cosmos than humanity has ever seen.
A star-forming region in the Carina Nebula captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera and Mid-Infrared Instrument. Image / Nasa ESA, CSA, STScI via AP
Yesterday's releases showed parts of the universe seen by other telescopes. But Webb's sheer power, distance from Earth and use of the infrared spectrum showed them in a new light.
"It's the beauty but also the story," Nasa senior Webb scientist John Mather, a Nobel laureate, said after the reveal. "It's the story of where did we come from."
An image of the Southern Ring Nebula being displayed at the Nasa press conference. Photo / Marcio Jose Sanchez, AP
And, he said, the more he looked at the images, the more he became convinced that life exists elsewhere in those thousands of stars and hundreds of galaxies.
With Webb, scientists hope to glimpse light from the first stars and galaxies that formed 13.7 billion years ago, just 100 million years from the universe-creating Big Bang. The telescope also will scan the atmospheres of alien worlds for possible signs of life.
"Every image is a new discovery and each will give humanity a view of the humanity that we've never seen before," Nasa administrator Bill Nelson said, rhapsodising over images showing "the formation of stars, devouring black holes".
Webb's use of the infrared light spectrum allows the telescope to see through the cosmic dust and see faraway light from the corners of the universe, he said.
Galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. Image / Nasa, ESA, CSA, STScI via AP
"We've really changed the understanding of our universe," said European Space Agency director general Josef Aschbacher.
The European and Canadian space agencies joined Nasa in building the telescope, which was launched in December after years of delays and cost overruns. Webb is considered the successor to the highly successful, but ageing Hubble Space Telescope.
Shown Tuesday:
• Southern Ring nebula, which is sometimes called "eight-burst". Images show a dying star with a foamy edge of escaping gas. It's about 2500 light years away. A light-year is 9 trillion kilometres.
• Carina nebula, one of the bright stellar nurseries in the sky, about 7600 light years away. One view was a stunning landscape of orange cliffs.
• Stephan's Quintet, five galaxies in a cosmic dance that was discovered 145 years ago in the constellation Pegasus. It includes a black hole that scientists said showed material "swallowed by this sort of cosmic monster". Webb "has just given us a new, unprecedented 290 million-year-old view of what this Quintet is up to", said Cornell University astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger, who wasn't part of the Webb team.
• A giant planet called Wasp-96b. It's about the size of Saturn and is 1150 light years away. A gas planet, it's not a candidate for life but a key target for astronomers. Instead of an image, the telescope used its infrared detectors to look at the chemical composition of the planet's atmosphere. It showed water vapour in the super-hot planet's atmosphere and even found the chemical spectrum of neon.
The images were released at an event at Nasa's Goddard Space Centre that included cheerleaders with pompoms the colour of the telescope's golden mirrors.
"It moves you. This is so so beautiful," Thomas Zurbuchen, chief of Nasa's science missions, said afterwards. "Nature is beautiful. To me, this is about beauty."
The world's biggest and most powerful space telescope rocketed away last December from French Guiana in South America. It reached its lookout point 1.6 million kilometres from Earth in January.
James Webb Space Telescope deputy project scientist for communications Amber Straughn speaks about the star-forming region called NGC 3324. Photo / Bill Ingalls, Nasa via AP
Then the lengthy process began to align the mirrors, get the infrared detectors cold enough to operate, and calibrate the science instruments, all protected by a sunshade the size of a tennis court.
The ground-breaking venture has a New Zealand connection. The James Webb Space Telescope is powered by Rocket Lab technology. SolAero Technologies, a New Mexico-based solar space power company that Rocket Lab acquired at the start of this year for US$80m ($116m), supplied the high-efficiency triple-junction solar cells that convert sunlight to power on the JWST.
