The James Webb telescope, touted by American space agency NASA as the most powerful to be placed in space, has revealed the clearest image to date of the early universe, going back 13 billion years. The stunning shot, released in a White House briefing by President Joe Biden on Monday, is overflowing with thousands of galaxies and features some of the faintest objects observed, colourised in blue, orange and white tones. The telescope was constructed by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp and placed in space in December 2021.
Here are other images captured by James Webb which will be released on Tuesday
- Carina Nebula: It is a stellar nursery located 7,600 light years away from Earth, where stars are born and is also one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky. Carina Nebula is home to many stars much more massive than our Sun.
- WASP-96b: Discovered in 2014, the giant gas planet is located 1,150 light years from Earth. It has half the mass of Jupiter and completes an orbit around its star every 3.4 days.
- Southern Ring Nebula: Also called the “Eight-Burst”, it is 2,000 light years away from Earth. This large planetary nebula includes an expanding cloud of gas around a dying star.
- Stephan’s Quintet: This compact galaxy group, first discovered in 1787, is located 290 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. According to NASA, four of the five galaxies in the group “are locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters”.
- The targets were selected by an international committee, including members from NASA, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
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