The james webb telescope has managed to spectacularly photograph celestial bodies that until now were not known in such detail. However, the $10 billion space satellite wasn’t launched just to bring you new off-world wallpapers. In addition to deep space research, James Webb will have an essential mission: study the solar system, and this has already begun.
True, the solar system still has many unknowns. Even recently the POT decided to direct viewer James Webb to a not-so-close neighbor, Jupiter.
Through a publication on its official website, and on GoogleArts&Culture, They show the images they obtained of the gas giant and other impressive shots of space.
If the James Webb can take impressive pictures from billions of light years away, just imagine what it could do in the solar system.
Although its mission focuses on space exploration for the first few hundred million years, it also will study the solar system beyond the asteroid belt.
Jupiter can be seen in this new image. Yes indeed, At the moment it is not such a spectacular image. And those are snapshots used only by James Webb’s engineers when calibrating their instruments. As a result, you won’t find a vibrant, high-contrast photo, but rather something reminiscent of a test image taken by JWST in deep space.
Other images taken by the James Webb Telescope
Webb’s infrared vision was designed to study every phase of more than 13.5 billion years of cosmic history, starting from about 200 million years after the Big Bang, a period of time that we had never studied before.
In a process called cosmological Redshift, light stretches from shorter wavelengths to longer wavelengths as the universe expands. That means light from early stars and galaxies reaches us as infrared light, which Webb specializes in.
The spiral and elliptical galaxies most people are familiar with didn’t always look like this. Webb can not only analyze how galaxies form, interact and change, but you can even trace its composition and structure.
At the center of almost all galaxies there is a black hole supermassive, and Webb will learn more about how these black holes affect their host galaxies. If any reader is curious to know how much does a black hole weigh, Webb can also measure the mass of one.
Stars and planets form in clouds of gas and dust. Visible light cannot penetrate these clouds, but infrared light can. As a demonstration, here are the iconic ‘Pillars of Creation’ taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in visible light.
And here it is again in near-infrared light, also because of the Hubble. As you can see in the photo under this paragraph, a multitude of previously hidden stars were revealed. Webb’s capabilities will make it possible to see infrared light from celestial objects with even greater clarity and sensitivity than Hubble.
Finally, because Webb can peer into the dusty clouds where stars form, he will be able to study the conditions that lead to new stars and investigate where very young stars live.
Webb will also study gas and dust ejected from dying stars.
