Two impressive images of the gas giant Jupiter have been leaked along with the main images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) released yesterday.
The images are not official, full-res images were released in the style of the major versions yesterday, but have been included in NASA Commissioning document to show that the NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) camera can track moving targets.
The composite shows a short-wavelength image of Jupiter on the left, and a long-wavelength image on the right, revealing the wildly different kinds of weather conditions that JWST can detect.
Both images were taken with a 75-second exposure and show the gas giant’s moons Europa, Thebes and Metis. NASA notes that Europa’s shadow is also visible to the left of the Great Red Spot.
Read more: Why are these photos such a big deal?
The ‘Cosmic Cliffs’ of the Carina Nebula, as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope
Yesterday, NASA released a full set of images from its James Webb Space Telescope, showing what is said to be the “deepest” and most detailed image of the universe to date.
A deep field image of a group of distant galaxies as they looked billions of years ago – from the early days of the universe – has been released by NASA along with the President of the United States.
The second image was an analysis of the atmosphere of a giant planet called WASP-96b, the first “spectral analysis” of an exoplanet’s atmosphere.
It was an example of the James Webb Space Telescope using a technique called transmission spectroscopy to observe starlight filtered through the planets’ atmospheres.
Since molecules in the atmosphere absorb certain wavelengths of light, whatever is filtered out will reveal the chemical makeups of those atmospheres, potentially indicating whether the planet is capable of harboring life.
The third image, another infrared image taken by NIRCam, showed the Southern Ring Nebula created by a dying star, about half a light-year in diameter.
The penultimate image showed a group of five galaxies known as Stephan’s Quintet, although only four of them actually interact – one of which is simply in the foreground.
Many commentators have suggested that NASA left the best to the end with its beautiful image of the cosmic cliffs of the Carina Nebula.
It made him cry, said Josef Schbacher, director general of the European Space Agency – NASA’s partner with the James Webb Space Telescope.
look at the pictures: Stunning photos show the universe ‘like we’ve never seen it before’
The Southern Ring Nebula, as seen by JWST’s NIRCam
telescope mission
A partnership of scientists and engineers has been formed between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency – and they worked for 20 years to complete the £8.4 billion telescope.
On Christmas Day, 2021, Webb was launched and reached its destination in a heliocentric orbit about a million miles from Earth a month later.
Once there, the telescope underwent a months-long process of spreading all of its components, including sunscreen the size of a tennis court, aligning its mirrors and calibrating its instruments.
The universe has stretched for 13.8 billion years, which means that light from the first stars and galaxies has been “stretched” from shorter visible wavelengths to longer infrared wavelengths.
This allows Webb to see the universe in unprecedented new detail.
These images are the first of millions that the new telescope will produce over its 20-year lifespan.
Each full-color, high-resolution image revealed on Tuesday took weeks to display from the telescope’s raw data.
The photo shoots were watched all over the world including the United States, Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Europe.