July 11, 2022

JWST First image!

If you follow stuff like this, you probably already know, but the James Webb Space Telescope team just released the first actual image from the telescope:

More images are expected to be released tomorrow (July 12). Visit their page for details (and the full-sized image — all 4537×4630 pixels of it). Visit their excellent “Where Is Webb?” page for the latest status and stats on the JWST.

Congrats again to everyone involved! This was an amazing (and prolonged) effort. I’m glad I get to see some of the results now!

About Wyrd Smythe

The canonical fool on the hill watching the sunset and the rotation of the planet and thinking what he imagines are large thoughts. View all posts by Wyrd Smythe

This entry was posted on Monday, July 11th, 2022 at 7:10 pm and tagged with astronomy, James Webb Space Telescope, JWST, space and posted in Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

7 responses to “JWST First image!”

Wyrd Smythe
July 11th, 2022 at 7:12 pm

To quote from the NASA page for the image:

This deep field, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours – achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope’s deepest fields, which took weeks.

The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it. Webb’s NIRCam has brought those distant galaxies into sharp focus – they have tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features.

So, if you noticed some distortion in the image, it’s from the gravitational lensing. And just think: “tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before”! How cool is that?

Reply
Wyrd Smythe
July 12th, 2022 at 4:19 pm

A stunning new image released today!

I’m thinking it’s my new wallpaper…

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- Wyrd Smythe
  July 12th, 2022 at 4:25 pm
  
  Yeah! New wallpaper! Gorgeous!!
  
  Reply
Wyrd Smythe
July 12th, 2022 at 5:42 pm

Meanwhile, here on Earth,…

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Wyrd Smythe
July 14th, 2022 at 1:00 am

And:

😀

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Anonymole
July 16th, 2022 at 11:26 am

Deep field images, meh. Seen one grain of sand fully of galaxies ya seen em’ all. Show me a Dyson Ring Swarm or the actual visible image of an exoplanet.

Or better yet, show me some arc of the space-dome that is utterly black. Like someone doesn’t want us looking in their direction.

Reply
- Wyrd Smythe
  July 16th, 2022 at 11:31 am
  
  Ah, but then we’d know there was something interesting there. If you were really clever, you’d make your patch of space look just as boring as other patches of space.
  
  “Nothing to see here, folks! Nothing of interest here. No reason to send your self-replicating planet-mining machines our way…”
  
  Reply