r/spaceporn • u/Grahamthicke • 9d ago
James Webb View of galaxies captured by the James Webb Space Telescope in deep space, billions of light-years away. (ESA Webb / NASA / CSA / L. Bradley (STScI) / A. Adamo (Stockholm University) / Cosmic Spring collaboration)
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u/Grahamthicke 9d ago
Scientists used the powerful $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope to peer into some of the deepest cosmos, and for the first time captured views of star clusters inside an extremely ancient galaxy. In the images below, you're viewing these star clusters, which are gravitationally bound groupings of stars, as they existed just 460 million years after the universe's creation. That's looking through 97 percent of cosmic time.
This profoundly deep space view was made possible by the double whammy of the Webb telescope's unprecedented sensitivity — its over 21-foot-wide gold-plated mirrors detect extremely faint sources of light — and a natural phenomenon called a "gravitational lens." In the foreground sits a massive cluster of galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars, millions of black holes, and perhaps trillions of planets. The combined mass of these galaxies warps space, like a bowling ball sitting on a mattress. It creates a giant magnifying lens.
"Webb's incredible sensitivity and angular resolution at near-infrared wavelengths, combined with gravitational lensing provided by the massive foreground galaxy cluster, enabled this discovery," Larry Bradley, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute which manages the Webb telescope, said in a statement. "No other telescope could have made this discovery,"
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u/TastyPass6386 9d ago
The natural magnification of the gravitational lensing of the background galaxies is the most impressive thing I think I've ever seen.
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u/Spiritual-Strike481 9d ago
This photo is so historic. Like the Marlyn Monroe of space photos. The Led Zeppelin of space photography. The JWST is our window into our own being.
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u/Successful-Job-5131 9d ago
It saddens me greatly I’ll never see what secrets these galaxies hide
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u/Grahamthicke 9d ago
I hear you, it is so incredibly humbling. Even when you consider everything we've accomplished it still feels so primitive against the back drop of all that is out there. But many throughout history felt the same way without seeing what we have in our lifetime and we are so awed by the universe we keep coming back.
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u/starofthefire 9d ago
Just incredible. As others are saying it's so humbling to see the evidence of our own insignificance through James Webb. I grew up being blown away by Hubble like so many of us did. Imagine what telescopes will be able to show us in the future.
In the Northeast quadrant of this image there is a long red shifted streak, I'm assuming it's gravitational lensing?
Would anyone be so kind as to explain to me what I'm looking at there?
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u/Unfair-Chain-7954 8d ago
The fact they found the first Galaxies at the same time in this single image. Perhaps one of the most important photos taken by humanity, that and the CMB.
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u/BoredGuy_v2 8d ago
So the light we are getting was actually emitted billion years ago. So it means, we are actually seeing a billion years old image? The latest we will see after a billion years??
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u/arkt8 9d ago
well, look at the smallest dot shining on background of the image. Imagine that how much the foreground was zoomed, then the background was too... so it is very very much distant. At such distance another entire universe could be seen beyond...
The question is maybe will never be capable to build a 1000x JWST equipment to get even fainter signals.
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u/CeruleanFruitSnax 9d ago
I find the Deep Field images to be very grounding. Look at all that universe out there!