By Lilian Nguyen
When talking about images captured from space, one can almost always associate the Hubble Space Telescope with deep space photography. However, with the new James Webb Telescope, Hubble’s so-called replacement, or rather its successor, scientists and astronomers are now able to go beyond lengths never seen before.
The James Webb Telescope, created through a collaboration of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA),the Canadian Space Agency and involving more than 300 universities, organizations and companies all across the US and other nations, was launched in December 2021.
It was promised to bring new endeavors towards space exploration and the discovery of all things, new and old. Even with the short amount of time that it has been in space, astronomers and scientists have all marveled at the observations that the Webb telescope has already made.
As technology progresses with time, each new discovery and advancement allows for mankind to also advance, which in this case is being done in space endeavors. The photos taken from the Webb telescope are one of the most detailed and beautiful pictures that have ever been taken of deep space.
The Webb telescope is able to take such photos due to the advancements in technology such as the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) which detects light in the infrared wavelength which spans from 0.6 to 6 microns. Because of its ability to capture light at such a small length, it’s able to capture hard-to-see images.
As well as being equipped with the NIRCam, the Webb telescope also has the Near-infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) built in it. It’s a piece of hardware that was newly built for Webb, which breaks light down into individual color components, giving more depth and detail to photos of deep space. Not only that, Webb also possesses micro shutters which allow the NIRSpec to carefully observe over 100 objects almost all at once, allowing for a larger landscape of space.
With this, Webb has already managed to produce some of the most breathtaking images. Many of which include a picture of the red planet, Mars. The images of the planet, captured with the NIRSpec, showed different high-resolution spectral signatures that captured Mars’s dust, clouds, rocks and even the structure of its atmosphere. It also managed to capture information about the planet’s water, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide levels.
While images of the red planet have already been captured in the past, new images, such as a cosmic tarantula, have been newly discovered, thanks to Webb’s NIRCam. The new nickname, the Tarantula Nebula, stems from the thousands of young stars and its dusty appearance that made it hard for previous telescopes, like the Hubble, to fully capture a high-resolution image. This groundbreaking image will aid astronomers in their research, allowing them to compare the stars in this nebula to other stars within faraway galaxies, unlocking more observations on the “Cosmic Noon.”
For thousands of years mankind has looked up towards the stars and humans will still continue to look upwards as new mysteries and discoveries arise. Much like how new images of Mars and new discoveries like the Nebula have been made, the James Webb telescope will continue to make groundbreaking discoveries, bringing mankind one step closer to revealing the secrets of the cosmos.
