European Space Agency released an image of the moon in January. Webb Space Telescope.
At the bottom of the image is LEDA 2046648, a spiral galaxy more than a billion light-years away from Earth in the constellation Hercules. Behind the LEDA are fields of more distant galaxies, ranging from spiral shapes to pinpricks of light in the distant universe.
web launch From French Guiana in December 2021. Scientific observations of the universe began in July. imagined by web It sheds new light on distant galaxies, exoplanets, and even the world of our local solar system.
Even though this The image, which was just released, was taken during the commissioning of one of Webb’s instruments, the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), according to ESA. releaseWhile NIRISS focused on a white dwarf (the central remnant of a star), Webb’s near-infrared camera (NIRCam) focused on LEDA 2046648 and its surroundings in the night sky.
One of the main purposes of the webLooking into the distant universe is a better understanding of how the first stars and galaxies formed. To that end, the telescope is looking at some of the oldest light in the universe, primarily through its instruments NIRCam and MIRI.
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An image contains hundreds of light sources that our eyes can perceive, but the infrared data from which the image was formed sure to record more galaxies.
webs deep field image This allows scientists to see some of the oldest light in the universe, and they often use gravitational lensing (magnification of distant light due to the gravitational distortion of spacetime) to see particularly ancient light sources.
This shot of LEDA 2046648 isn’t deep field, but it evokes a similar feeling. Awe, the colossal scale of the universe, and (if only short) Recognition that our mind can only understand a small part of it that.
