Images show NASA’s Webb Space Telescope finds things Hubble didn’t
- The James Webb Space Telescope can capture a more complete view of galaxies, stars and planets.
- The powerful telescope is 100 times more powerful than its predecessor, the Hubble, and uses infrared light.
- started JWST scientific operations in July. Scientists stress that the universe is just beginning to be revealed.
from NASA James Webb Space Telescope has been offering mind-blowing views of the cosmos since it began scientific operations in the summer.
Before Webb, astronomers had another workhorse cosmic observatory: the Hubble Space Telescope. Both are space telescopes, but they differ in many ways. Hubble sees ultraviolet light, visible light and a small portion of infrared, while Webb looks at the universe through the infrared spectrum.
Webb is 100 times more powerful than Hubble, allowing astronomers to look even further into space. As its first months of observations have shown, Webb is capable of taking the most amazing pictures of the universe to date.
Webb provided sharp views of Jupiter’s auroras and storms that Hubble can’t see
Hubble image of Jupiter (left) JWST image of Jupiter (right)
Hubble, NASA, ESA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt
In August, Webb captured images of Jupiter – the largest planet in our solar system. Compared to Hubble images of the gas giant, above left, Webb provides a sharper, sharper image and shows new details of Jupiter’s auroras and storm systems.
In Webb’s image of Jupiter, top right, that of the planet Great Red Spot — a huge storm that has been swirling for centuries — is so bright in reflected sunlight that it appears white.
Webb’s infrared image also shows Jupiter’s auroras illuminating both of the planet’s poles. Auroras are colorful displays of light that are not unique to Earth. Jupiter has the most powerful auroras in the solar system, according to NASA.
On both Earth and Jupiter, auroras occur when charged particles from the sun interact with the magnetic field, known as the magnetosphere, that surrounds a planet. Jupiter’s magnetic field is approx 20,000 times stronger than that of the Earth.
Webb revealed thread-like filaments in the Orion Nebula hidden in Hubble
Hubble image of the Orion Nebula (left) JWST image of the Orion Nebula (right)
NASA, ESA, Massimo Robberto (STScI, ESA), Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team NASA, ESA, CSA, Data reduction and analysis: PDRs4All ERS Team; graphic treatment S. Fuenmajor
NASA released images the Orion Nebula — a massive star-forming region 1,350 light-years from Earth — that Webb took in September. The nebula is the closest stellar nursery to us.
Dense clouds of cosmic dust in the nebula obscure star-forming structures from instruments that rely on visible light, as in the Hubble image of the nebula, upper left. For capture of infrared lightWebb is able to peer through these layers of dust, giving astronomers unprecedented views of the nebula’s various components.
Astronomers believe that nebulae are clouds dominated by vast, tangled, filament-like structures, called filaments, that feed material such as gas to form and feed stars. Webb’s images reveal these gaseous filaments in great detail.
Webb revealed hundreds of stars Hubble couldn’t see in the epic Pillars of Creation
The Pillars of Creation, photographed by Hubble in 2014 (left) and JWST in 2022 (right).
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI).
In October, NASA released a Webb’s snapshot of the pillars of creation — towering columns of gas and dust where stars are born. The epic stellar nursery is located within the vast Eagle Nebula, a cloud of dust and gas 6,500 light-years away.
Hubble also imaged the famous nursery in 1995, above left. When the two images are compared side-by-side, Webb’s camera pierces through solid columns of cosmic dust, revealing hundreds of stars that Hubble couldn’t see.
Webb spied countless galaxies that Hubble missed
A side-by-side collage of the same area captured by the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes.
NASA/STScI; NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
One of the first images NASA shared from Webb was a “deep field” image — a long-exposure observation of a region of the sky, which allows the telescope to capture light from distant, extremely faint objects . The image took less than a day to capture, they said NASA.
When the picture was presented in July, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that if you had a grain of sand at arm’s length, that would represent the part of the universe you see in this picture.
“The image of the deep field fills me with wonder and hope,” said Lisa Kaltenegger, professor of astronomy at Cornell University and director of the Carl Sagan Institute. he previously told Insider.
A side-by-side of Hubble’s deep field next to Webb’s reveals just how much sharper and sharper the new space observatory is.
Webb revealed 2 stars within this nebula, where Hubble only saw one
The Hubble image of the Southern Ring Nebula (left) has only one light in the center, while JWST (right) clearly shows two stars.
The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA/NASA); NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
This is the Southern Ring Nebula, where a dying star is slowly shedding layers of its atmosphere in successive waves, creating ever-expanding bubbles of colored gas. Scientists knew there were two stars at the center of the nebula, but they couldn’t see them in the Hubble images.
Webb’s new image reveals the dying star, glowing red because it is surrounded by dust, right next to its companion white star.
An iconic cluster of 5 galaxies is much brighter and clearer in Webb’s eye
The Stephan’s Quintet galaxy cluster, as photographed by Hubble (left) and JWST (right).
Hubble SM4 ERO Team/NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
Four of the galaxies in this image Stephan’s Quintet they are about 300,000 light years apart, locked in a cosmic dance as the gravity of each galaxy influences the others.
The Webb image also reveals new galaxies in the background, which were not visible to Hubble.
Where Hubble saw a faint spot, Webb resolved 2 different mysterious objects
One of the lensed images of MACS0647-JD, from the James Webb Space Telescope.
SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, CSA, Dan Coe (STScI), Rebecca Larson (UT), Yu-Yang Hsiao (JHU) IMAGE PROCESSING: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Dan Coe, a researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute, first discovered this object in deep space about 10 years ago, using the Hubble.
“With Hubble, it was just this pale red dot. We could tell it was very small, just a tiny galaxy in the first 400 million years of the universe. Now we look with Webb and we are able to solve TWO objects” Coe said in October Release from NASA.
SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI and Tiger Hsiao (Johns Hopkins University) IMAGE PROCESSING: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Both Hubble and Webb study the early universe gravitational lens. This is what happens when a distant galaxy cluster is so massive that it warps space-time, bending the light from the distant galaxies behind it. This creates mirror images of these galaxies, reflected back to us.
Thus, the imprint of the mysterious objects appears at three points in the images above. Breakdowns of these three system images, at right, show how much clearer the Webb images are. They clearly show two different objects.
“We are actively debating whether these are two galaxies or two groups of stars within a galaxy,” Coe said in the statement. “We don’t know, but those are the questions that Webb is designed to help us answer.”
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