WOW
The first test image from the James Webb telescope.
Every one of those little dots is an entire galaxy as large as or larger than our own Milky Way. Stretching off into infinity…
When I was in the Navy and we were out at sea, where there was no light to distract from the starlight above, which even on a moonless night was bright enough to read by, I used to lie on the deck and look up at the sky, and think about the fact there was light I was seeing that had begun its journey to my eyes millions of years before any human had walked the earth. It made one feel very small and insignificant. And then I would think about how this small insignificant being on this small insignificant planet orbiting this insignificant star that was out on the edge of what was thought of even then as a smaller-scale galaxy - that we now know is certainly very far from the center of the universe, could look up at that night sky and have comprehension of what I was looking at. And at that moment, I knew that intelligence is not insignificant.
From The Atlantic:
NASA has released the list of cosmic objects that will be revealed on Tuesday.
The observatory, a joint project of NASA and the European and Canadian space agencies, is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope. It can study celestial objects in ways that Hubble cannot, and gaze deeper into the cosmos, too—to some of the oldest stars and galaxies, which ignited into existence not long after the Big Bang. It is not hyperbole to say that Webb’s observations will provide an entirely new sense of the universe and how it all came to be.
There’s a pair of nebulae, radiant regions in interstellar space. The Carina Nebula is a billowy cloud of gas and dust located about 7,600 light-years from Earth, and home to radiant stars many times more massive than our sun. The Hubble views of this object are already stunning. The Southern Ring nebula is a cloud of ever-expanding gas around a dying star, situated about 2,000 light-years from here. Nebulas are known to be photogenic environments, so these shots are sure to be dazzling.
Then there’s some galaxy goodness. Stephan’s Quintet, named for the 19th-century French astronomer who discovered them, is a cluster of galaxies about 290 million light-years away. Four of the five galaxies are locked in a kind of dance together, their shapes warped by each other’s gravitational fields. Webb will also show us a galaxy cluster known as SMACS 0723, where galaxies distort and magnify the light emanating from other objects behind them, a cosmic quirk that allows telescopes to spot very distant and faint galaxies farther out. This is the kind of work that Webb was designed to do best. Hubble’s famous “deep field” cataloged thousands of galaxies; Webb’s future deep fields will reveal 1 million of them.
The first year of Webb’s observations is already planned, filled out with research proposals from scientists around the world to study targets as familiar as the planets in our solar system and objects as mysterious as black holes at the centers of faraway galaxies.
I cannot imagine that we represent the only sentient life in this multi- galactic Universe. Like your deck gazing, TC, it does snap things into perspective. We are "dots" but we are intelligent, self- reflective ones!! To even have the thought needed to project ourselves " out there" and then to painstakingly, over years of telescopes, to develop the James Webb-- our eyes to "see" more and more....intelligence absolutely significant!!! But what we know is mostly what we don't know.
Loved this post!!
'President Joe Biden will unveil the much-anticipated first full-color image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope on Monday, agency officials confirmed.'
'The image, known as "Webb's First Deep Field," will be the deepest and highest-resolution view of the universe ever captured, showing myriad galaxies as they appeared up to 13 billion years in the past, according to NASA.' (NBCnews)
'NASA Shares List of Cosmic Targets for Webb Telescope’s First Images'
'Below is the list of cosmic objects that Webb targeted for these first observations, which will be released in NASA’s live broadcast beginning at 10:30 a.m. EDT Tuesday, July 12. Each image will simultaneously be made available on social media as well as on the agency’s website.'
'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 1877. 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 release of these first images marks the official beginning of Webb’s science operations, which will continue to explore the mission’s key science themes. Teams have already applied through a competitive process for time to use the telescope, in what astronomers call its first “cycle,” or first year of observations." (NASA)