NASA releases the first image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope : The farthest that humanity has ever seen

PC:  NASA, ESA, CSA

Finally, the moment has arrived!! Nasa has released the first image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The deepest and the sharpest infrared image is known as Webb's First Deep Field. The image focuses on the galaxy cluster SMACS J0723.3-7327 which lies around 4.6 billion light-years away from us. Since the mass of the galaxy cluster is huge, it distorts spacetime in such a way that objects behind the cluster are magnified. As a result, some distant galaxies lying behind these clusters are visible in the image. That's the aura of gravitational lensing!!

This is the farthest that humanity has ever seen-the deepest and the sharpest view of the cosmos till date. Each bright dot in the image, barring the very bright ones, represents a galaxy. The slice of the vast universe focused in the image, covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length by someone on the ground!! Isn't it amazing!!! Intimidating indeed!!

The image was the result of a day-long observation with the JWST. US President Joe Biden unveiled the image during an event in the White House on Monday, July 11, 2022. This image surpasses all previous records held by the images from Hubble Space Telescope. But the scientists believe that this is just the beginning of a new era in infrared astronomy-The JWST era. 

By

Prabir Rudra