This telescope will spy distant galaxies using 168 off-the-shelf Canon lenses The Dragonfly Telephoto Array installed in New Mexico. It presently uses 48 Canon 400mm lenses (in two arrays), but that number will be increasing by quite a bit. Image by Pieter van Dokkum, Yale University This photo shows several stars and distant galaxies. If you scale it to the size of universe, according to NASA, all that was captured in the photo was the size of a grain held at arm's length from Earth. The image is a combination of several deep field photos taken over a combined time of 12.5 hours. James Webb Space Telescope captured US President Joe Biden on 11 July 2022 released the debut photo from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope - an image of a galaxy cluster revealing the most detailed glimpse of the early universe ever The NASA Hubble Telescope captured a beautiful photograph of a pair of interacting galaxies deep in space. The photo also showed many different stars and other galaxies shining in the background The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will take this idea to the extreme, studying objects so distant that the telescope will essentially be looking back 13.5 billion years — close to the start "The ability to observe the remnants of galaxies colliding with each other and searching for the faintest and smallest galaxies in the universe, will help us understand the potential fate of the Milky Way in the far distant future." The Andromeda Galaxy as captured by the Huntsman Telescope. Source: Sarah Caddy. The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the mirror image of a distant galaxy. NASA released the photo which appears to show two galaxies, but is actually one duplicated by gravitational lensing. 16jVSZ. The White House released the first image of the collection of pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope during a preview event Monday. Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO hide caption toggle caption Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO The White House released the first image of the collection of pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope during a preview event Monday. Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO At first glance, the first image from NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope may not seem all that remarkable. But in reality, what appears to be tiny specks in space are actually galaxies — billions of years old. "If you held a grain of sand on the tip of your finger at arms length, that is the part of the universe you are seeing — just one little speck of the universe," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said of the image on Monday. And more than that, what's picked up in this image are some of the very first galaxies to form in the universe. More images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope should be able to reveal which galaxies in the far, far distance are habitable, Nelson said. The White House, along with NASA, revealed the first of a series of pictures from the telescope since it's launch from Earth more than six months ago. President Biden called Monday's reveal "a historic day." NASA had planned to release the picture today as part of a collection of the first scientific results, but determined the image is so dramatic that Biden should be the one to reveal it to the world. The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope is the most sophisticated observatory ever launched. It left Earth last December. In late January, it reached its celestial parking place a million miles away from the planet. Since then, engineers have been checking out the instruments, aligning the mirrors and letting the telescope cool down so its instruments will work properly. "Webb was built to find the first generation of galaxies that formed after the big bang," says Jane Rigby, operations project scientist for the telescope. "That is the core science goal it was built to do." Before declaring the telescope open for business mission managers wanted to make what they call early release observations. These are intended to show that the telescope works, and as Rigby says, "are intended to be jaw-droppingly beautiful, powerful both visually and scientifically." The James Webb Space Telescope shown here being tested on earth is expected to reveal some of the most spectacular views of the Universe ever seen. Chris Gunn/Northrop Grumman, NASA hide caption toggle caption Chris Gunn/Northrop Grumman, NASA The James Webb Space Telescope shown here being tested on earth is expected to reveal some of the most spectacular views of the Universe ever seen. Chris Gunn/Northrop Grumman, NASA In addition to the image containing the earliest galaxies ever seen, NASA will also release images of a stellar nursery where stars form called the Carina Nebula, the Southern Ring Nebula, and a group of galaxies discovered in 1787 called Stephan's Quintet. There will also be an analysis of the light coming from a giant planet orbiting outside our solar system with the prosaic name WASP-96b. Those additional images are expected to come out on Tuesday morning. Looking Back To The Beginning Webb is designed to gather and analyze infrared light, which is at longer wavelengths than can be seen by the human eye. That will allow it to capture light from the earliest galaxies, which appear in the infrared. Those early galaxies are far away — more than 13 billion light years — and as powerful as the Webb telescope is, they may just look like faint smudges. But those smudges will help astronomers understand more about how the universe as we know it came to be. One early target for the James Webb Space Telescope is a cluster of distant galaxies known as SMACS 0723. The gravitational field of these galaxies acts as a cosmic lens, allowing the telescope to look at far more distant and older parts of the universe. STSci hide caption toggle caption STSci One early target for the James Webb Space Telescope is a cluster of distant galaxies known as SMACS 0723. The gravitational field of these galaxies acts as a cosmic lens, allowing the telescope to look at far more distant and older parts of the universe. STSci One of the astronomers who will be conducting the search for those earliest galaxies is Caitlin Casey, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin. She says one way to look for these faint galaxies is to point the telescope at the same patch of sky for a hundred hours or more, and let the light from these distant objects trickle in. The Hubble space telescope showed this so-called deep field approach could identify lots of previously unseen galaxies. But where Hubble was able to see ten thousand galaxies in a deep field, with Webb, "we're going to have a million galaxies," Casey says. Beyond finding new galaxies, Casey wants to understand the large structure of the universe, what the universe would look like if you could step back and get a birds eye view of it. "If you zoom all the way out, the entire universe looks like, you know, something like the interior of a sponge where there are these like little filaments and voids," Casey says. "So what we really want to capture is that structure." Much More To See But that's just the beginning. The breadth of science Webb can be used for is staggering. For example, Megan Mansfield, a NASA Sagan Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona, will be using Webb to study the atmospheres of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. In particular, she wants to know about their atmospheres — "what they're made of, what their temperature is." That will tell her a lot about the planet itself, and whether it might be capable of sustaining life. Anna Nierenberg of the University of California, Merced, leads a team that has cooked up a clever way to use the new telescope to try to understand the fundamental nature of dark matter, that invisible stuff that makes up a quarter of the universe. "You simply can't do that with any other instrument," she says. "If everything works it will be a big deal." And as with any scientific instrument with new capabilities, no one really knows what secrets the Webb telescope will reveal about the universe we live in. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce contributed to this report. Nasa’s new space telescope has gazed into the distant universe and shown perfect vision a spiky image of a faraway star photobombed by thousands of ancient image released on Wednesday from the James Webb Space telescope was a test shot – not an official science observation – to see how its 18 hexagonal mirrors worked together for a single coordinated image taken 1m miles km away from Earth. Officials said it worked better than month, Nasa looked at a much closer star with 18 separate images from its mirror segments. That star, known as HD 84406, is 258 light years away in the constellation Ursa said they were giddy as they watched the latest test photos arrive. Nasa’s test image was aimed at a star 100 times fainter than the human eye can see. This star – called 2MASS J17554042+6551277 – is 2,000 light years away from HD 84406. A light year is nearly 6tn miles km.The shape of Webb’s mirrors and its filters made the shimmering star look more red and spiky but the background really stole the show.“You can’t help but see those thousands of galaxies behind it, really gorgeous,” said Jane Rigby, Webb operations project galaxies are several billions of years old. Eventually, scientists hope Webb will see so far away and back in time that it will only be “a couple hundred million years after the big bang”, she first science images won’t come until late June or early $10bn Webb – successor to the nearly 32-year-old Hubble Space Telescope – blasted off from South America in December and reached its designated perch in January. Astronomers using the Webb telescope discovered evidence of complex organic molecules similar to smoke or smog in the distant galaxy shown here. The galaxy, more than 12 billion light-years away, happens to line up almost perfectly with a second galaxy only three billion light-years away from our perspective on Earth. In this false-color Webb image, the foreground galaxy is shown in blue, while the background galaxy is in red. The organic molecules are highlighted in orange. J. Spilker/S. Doyle, NASA, ESA, CSA An international team of astronomers has detected complex organic molecules in the most distant galaxy to date using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The discovery of the molecules, which are familiar on Earth in smoke, soot and smog, demonstrates the power of Webb to help understand the complex chemistry that goes hand-in-hand with the birth of new stars even in the earliest periods of the universe’s history. At least for galaxies, the new findings cast doubt on the old adage that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Using the Webb telescope, Texas A&M University astronomer Justin Spilker and collaborators found the organic molecules in a galaxy more than 12 billion light-years away. Because of its extreme distance, the light detected by the astronomers began its journey when the universe was less than billion years old — about 10% of its current age. The galaxy was first discovered by the National Science Foundation’s South Pole Telescope in 2013 and has since been studied by many observatories, including the radio telescope ALMA and the Hubble Space Telescope. Spilker notes the discovery, reported this week in the journal Nature, was made possible through the combined powers of Webb and fate, with a little help from a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. Lensing, originally predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, happens when two galaxies are almost perfectly aligned from our point of view on Earth. The light from the background galaxy is stretched and magnified by the foreground galaxy into a ring-like shape, known as an Einstein ring. “By combining Webb’s amazing capabilities with a natural cosmic magnifying glass,’ we were able to see even more detail than we otherwise could,” said Spilker, an assistant professor in the Texas A&M Department of Physics and Astronomy and a member of the George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy. “That level of magnification is actually what made us interested in looking at this galaxy with Webb in the first place, because it really lets us see all the rich details of what makes up a galaxy in the early universe that we could never do otherwise.” The galaxy observed by Webb shows an Einstein ring caused by a phenomenon known as lensing, which occurs when two galaxies are almost perfectly aligned from our perspective on Earth. The gravity from the galaxy in the foreground causes the light from the background galaxy to be distorted and magnified, like looking through the stem of a wine glass. Because they are magnified, lensing allows astronomers to study very distant galaxies in more detail than otherwise possible. S. Doyle/J. Spilker The data from Webb found the telltale signature of large organic molecules akin to smog and smoke —building blocks of the same cancer-causing hydrocarbon emissions on Earth that are key contributors to atmospheric pollution. However, Spilker says the implications of galactic smoke signals are much less disastrous for their cosmic ecosystems. “These big molecules are actually pretty common in space,” Spilker explained. “Astronomers used to think they were a good sign that new stars were forming. Anywhere you saw these molecules, baby stars were also right there blazing away.” The new results from Webb show that this idea might not exactly ring true in the early universe, according to Spilker. “Thanks to the high-definition images from Webb, we found a lot of regions with smoke but no star formation, and others with new stars forming but no smoke,” Spilker added. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign graduate student Kedar Phadke, who led the technical development of the team’s Webb observations, noted that astronomers are using Webb to make connections across the vastness of space with unprecedented potential. “Discoveries like this are precisely what Webb was built to do understand the earliest stages of the universe in new and exciting ways,” Phadke said. “It’s amazing that we can identify molecules billions of light-years away that we’re familiar with here on Earth, even if they show up in ways we don’t like, like smog and smoke. It’s also a powerful statement about the amazing capabilities of Webb that we’ve never had before.” The team’s leadership also includes NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center astronomer Jane Rigby, University of Illinois professor Joaquin Vieira and dozens of astronomers around the world. The discovery is Webb’s first detection of complex molecules in the early universe — a milestone moment that Spilker sees as a beginning rather than an end. “These are early days for the Webb Telescope, so astronomers are excited to see all the new things it can do for us,” Spilker said. “Detecting smoke in a galaxy early in the history of the universe? Webb makes this look easy. Now that we’ve shown this is possible for the first time, we’re looking forward to trying to understand whether it’s really true that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Maybe we’ll even be able to find galaxies that are so young that complex molecules like these haven’t had time to form in the vacuum of space yet, so galaxies are all fire and no smoke. The only way to know for sure is to look at more galaxies, hopefully even further away than this one.” The team’s paper, “Spatial variations in aromatic hydrocarbon emission in a dust-rich galaxy,” can be viewed online along with related figures and acknowledgements. JWST is operated by the Space Telescope Science Institute under the management of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy under NASA contract NAS 5-03127. The South Pole Telescope is supported by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the United States Antarctic Program. This week the Webb team continued to make progress in aligning the telescope to the NIRCam instrument. Between taking the data to understand the optical components, we continue to check out the science instruments. The NIRSpec instrument includes a microshutter array of a quarter-million miniature movable windows, each by millimeters in size. The microshutter array allows scientists to target specific galaxies in fields they are studying, while closing the windows on the background or other objects which would contaminate the spectra. We have begun testing the mechanism and electronics that control and actuate the microshutters. In recent weeks, we shared a technique for theoretically modeling the early universe. Today, we will discuss an observational program to help us answer some of those questions. Massimo Stiavelli, the Webb Mission Office head at the Space Telescope Science Institute, tells us about his planned investigations of the first stars and galaxies “The chemical composition of the early universe, just after the big bang, is the product of the nuclear processes that took place in the first few minutes of the universe’s existence. These processes are known as primordial nucleosynthesis.’ One of the predictions of this model is that the chemical composition of the early universe is largely hydrogen and helium. There were only traces of heavier elements, which formed later in stars. These predictions are compatible with observations, and are in fact one of the key pieces of evidence that support the hot big bang model. “The earliest stars formed out of material with this primordial composition. Finding these stars, commonly dubbed as the First Stars’ or Population III stars,’ is an important verification of our cosmological model, and it is within reach of the James Webb Space Telescope. Webb might not be able to detect individual stars from the beginning of the universe, but it can detect some of the first galaxies containing these stars. “One way to confirm whether we are finding the first stars is to accurately measure metallicities of very distant galaxies. The astronomical term, metallicity, is a measurement of the amount of material heavier than hydrogen and helium – so a low metallicity galaxy would indicate it was made up of these First Stars.’ One of the most distant galaxies discovered so far, known as MACS1149-JD1, is confirmed to be at redshift and emitted the light we see when the universe was only 600 million years old. The light from this distant galaxy has been traveling ever since then and is just reaching us now. “In the first year of Webb science, I have an observing program to study this galaxy and determine its metallicity. I will do this by attempting to measure the ratio in the strength of two spectroscopic lines emitted by oxygen ions, originally emitted at violet-blue and blue-green visible light rest frame wavelengths at 4,363 angstroms and 5,007 angstroms. Thanks to cosmological redshift, these lines are now detectable at the infrared wavelengths that Webb can see. The use of a ratio of two lines of the same ion can provide an exquisite measurement of the gas temperature in this galaxy and, through relatively simple theoretical modeling, will provide a robust measurement of its metallicity. “The challenge is that one of these lines is usually extremely weak. However, this line tends to get stronger at lower metallicity. So if we failed to detect the line and measure metallicity for MACS1149-JD1, that would likely mean that it has already been enriched by the heavier elements, and we need to look further and harder. Whether using my data or with future programs, I fully expect that during its operational lifetime Webb will be able to find objects with metallicity sufficiently low to hold keys for understanding the first generation of stars.” –Massimo Stiavelli, Webb Mission Office head, Space Telescope Science Institute By Jonathan Gardner, Webb deputy senior project scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center And Alexandra Lockwood, project scientist for Webb science communications, Space Telescope Science Institute Post navigation An international team of astronomers has detected complex organic molecules in the most distant galaxy to date using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The discovery of the molecules, which are familiar on Earth in smoke, soot and smog, demonstrates the power of Webb to help understand the complex chemistry that goes hand-in-hand with the birth of new stars even in the earliest periods of the universe’s history. At least for galaxies, the new findings cast doubt on the old adage that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Using the Webb telescope, Texas A&M University astronomer Justin Spilker and collaborators found the organic molecules in a galaxy more than 12 billion light-years away. Because of its extreme distance, the light detected by the astronomers began its journey when the universe was less than billion years old — about 10% of its current age. The galaxy was first discovered by the National Science Foundation’s South Pole Telescope in 2013 and has since been studied by many observatories, including the radio telescope ALMA and the Hubble Space Telescope. Spilker notes the discovery, reported this week in the journal Nature, was made possible through the combined powers of Webb and fate, with a little help from a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. Lensing, originally predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, happens when two galaxies are almost perfectly aligned from our point of view on Earth. The light from the background galaxy is stretched and magnified by the foreground galaxy into a ring-like shape, known as an Einstein ring. “By combining Webb’s amazing capabilities with a natural 'cosmic magnifying glass,' we were able to see even more detail than we otherwise could,” said Spilker, an assistant professor in the Texas A&M Department of Physics and Astronomy and a member of the George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy. “That level of magnification is actually what made us interested in looking at this galaxy with Webb in the first place, because it really lets us see all the rich details of what makes up a galaxy in the early universe that we could never do otherwise.” The data from Webb found the telltale signature of large organic molecules akin to smog and smoke —building blocks of the same cancer-causing hydrocarbon emissions on Earth that are key contributors to atmospheric pollution. However, Spilker says the implications of galactic smoke signals are much less disastrous for their cosmic ecosystems. “These big molecules are actually pretty common in space,” Spilker explained. “Astronomers used to think they were a good sign that new stars were forming. Anywhere you saw these molecules, baby stars were also right there blazing away.” The new results from Webb show that this idea might not exactly ring true in the early universe, according to Spilker. “Thanks to the high-definition images from Webb, we found a lot of regions with smoke but no star formation, and others with new stars forming but no smoke,” Spilker added. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign graduate student Kedar Phadke, who led the technical development of the team’s Webb observations, noted that astronomers are using Webb to make connections across the vastness of space with unprecedented potential. “Discoveries like this are precisely what Webb was built to do understand the earliest stages of the universe in new and exciting ways,” Phadke said. “It’s amazing that we can identify molecules billions of light-years away that we’re familiar with here on Earth, even if they show up in ways we don’t like, like smog and smoke. It's also a powerful statement about the amazing capabilities of Webb that we've never had before.” The team’s leadership also includes NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center astronomer Jane Rigby, University of Illinois professor Joaquin Vieira and dozens of astronomers around the world. The discovery is Webb’s first detection of complex molecules in the early universe — a milestone moment that Spilker sees as a beginning rather than an end. “These are early days for the Webb Telescope, so astronomers are excited to see all the new things it can do for us,” Spilker said. “Detecting smoke in a galaxy early in the history of the universe? Webb makes this look easy. Now that we’ve shown this is possible for the first time, we’re looking forward to trying to understand whether it’s really true that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Maybe we’ll even be able to find galaxies that are so young that complex molecules like these haven’t had time to form in the vacuum of space yet, so galaxies are all fire and no smoke. The only way to know for sure is to look at more galaxies, hopefully even further away than this one.” The team’s paper, “Spatial variations in aromatic hydrocarbon emission in a dust-rich galaxy,” can be viewed online along with related figures and acknowledgements. JWST is operated by the Space Telescope Science Institute under the management of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy under NASA contract NAS 5-03127. The South Pole Telescope is supported by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the United States Antarctic Program. About Research At Texas A&M University As one of the world’s leading research institutions, Texas A&M is at the forefront in making significant contributions to scholarship and discovery, including in science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M generated annual expenditures of more than $ billion in fiscal year 2021. Texas A&M ranked 14th in the most recent National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development Survey based on expenditures of more than $ billion in fiscal year 2020. Texas A&M’s research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting, in many cases, in economic benefits to the state, nation and world. To learn more, visit ResearchTexas A&M.

the telescope will photograph distant galaxies