You All Have Seen The Images From James Webb Space Telescope. Do You Know What Each Of Those Mean?

First up, am neither an astronomer nor a cosmologist. Am just someone who has this habit of looking up from time to time, and wondering what’s up there.

Sometimes, I could be in the middle of my walk, and I will look up. Sometimes, I could be doing my work and I will look outside my window (not to look down), but to look up. Sometimes, I could be talking to someone and I will just look up. And there are times when I actually take my car and drive out of my city to camp in dark open fields with my telescope, no points for guessing — just to look up.

Curious to ask, why do I look up so much? Well, am just as curious as you are. Only thing is, am more curious about our universe, about the twinkle twinkle little stars (love that poem), the mind-blowing faraway galaxies, the nebulas, supernovas, and everything that is part of the wonderful cosmos. I absolutely love to wonder about what lies beyond our earth and the solar system. It's one of those romantic intergalactic journeys that I like to take from time to time in my mind.

This brings me to the subject of the James Webb Space Telescope (aka JWST). Yeah, the same one which has been beaming out some insanely breath-taking and amazing pictures of our universe over the last couple of days.

Those images have been circulating on all kinds of social media and messenger platforms — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Reddit, Telegram, and even LinkedIn. It's the latest tsunami of pictures that has been doing the rounds for the last couple of days. If you have not seen or heard about it, you are probably living under a rock.

People all over the world are definitely awe-struck and using their thumbs to generate thousands of likes and emojis such as these 🤩😲👌😍.

But how many of us actually even understand what those images mean, what’s in those images, and why are they so amazingly beautiful? I admit, even I didn’t know most of the images when I saw them for the first time. But then my dear friend — curiosity, caught up with me. So, I started digging into those images to really understand what these cosmic images are all about.

And that’s what I am about to share with you earthlings —

First, a few facts to get you excited and curious (that’s important) about the JWST —

• It is the Big Daddy in the world of space telescopes. It has the biggest mirror and is almost a million miles (1.5 million km) away from where you sit.
• It has taken NASA 30 years and $10 billion to create the largest and most powerful space science telescope.
• It was launched on Dec 25th, 2021 aboard Santa’s sled (just kidding, it was launched aboard an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket.
• Its gigantic sun shield base measures a massive 22m by 12m, roughly the same size as a tennis court. And it weighs 6,500kg.
• It is named after former NASA chief James Webb. Webb took charge of the space agency from 1961 to 1968, retiring just a few months before NASA put the first man on the moon.
• It took 30 days for the JWST to reach its permanent home — a Lagrange point (a gravitationally stable location in space).
• 300 universities, organizations, and companies across 29 U.S. states and 14 countries teamed up to get this baby to space.
• It is the product of an impressive international collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency.
• JWST will focus on 4 main areas:

1. First light in the universe,
2. Assembly of galaxies in the early universe,
3. The birth of stars and protoplanetary systems, and
4. Planets (including the origins of life).

Note — Before we dive in further, some basic information about what a light-year is, as you will encounter this at a number of places in the article. I promise to keep it simple and avoid any and all technical jargon.

A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year. One light-year is 9.46 trillion km (exactly 9,460,730,472,580.8 km). To put that in perspective

The distance of Earth from the Sun is 150 million km. At this distance, it takes around 8 minutes for the light from the sun to reach you.

So, hypothetically speaking if our Sun was 1 light year away, it would take roughly a year (350 days) for sunlight to reach us. I hope I got this calculation right. If not, pls call it out.

Keep this light-year concept in your mind while you read further. It will blow your mind off to tiny microscopic pieces.

Let’s explore our Universe through the eyes of JWST —

Carina Nebula

Carina Nebula (a Nebula is a giant cloud of dust and gas in space, thrown out by the explosion of a dying star. Other nebulae (more than 1 Nebula) are regions where new stars are beginning to form), is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky. It is located in the Carina-Sagitarrius arm of our Milky Way Galaxy.

It is roughly 7600 light-years away and spans 300 light-years across. (Our Milky Way Galaxy is 120,000 light-years wide). It is a stellar nursery of stars and dust where new stars are forming and destroying their birth cloud. It is home to massive stars, several of which are much larger than our very own Sonny boy.

This landscape of ‘mountains’ and ‘valleys’ speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula.

Called the “Cosmic Cliffs”, this seemingly three-dimensional picture looks like jagged mountains on a moonlit evening. In reality, it is the edge of the giant, gaseous cavity within NGC 3324, and the tallest ‘peaks’ in this image are about 7 light-years high (remember? 1 light year is equal to 9.6 trillion km)

This one image of the intricate swirls of dust, gas, and young stars is so absolutely jaw-dropping and stunning that, it even left the scientists presenting it at the NASA press conference at a loss for where to start.

Honestly, it does look like a very complex image with lots going on. And will probably also take astronomers many years of hard work to figure out exactly what’s going on here.

Southern Ring Nebula

The Southern Ring Nebula is an expanding cloud of gas surrounded by a dying star. It is around 2000 light-years away in our Milky Way Galaxy.

The central star has transformed into a tiny white dwarf (dying star) by blowing off its outer layer. This happens at a speed of about 15 kilometers per second, sending out rings of gas and dust. The “ring” is the detritus (waste material left after a particular event) of that dying star. This ring itself is half a light-year across.

The small white dwarf, the star that caused all this commotion was a star about the size of our Sun. It ran out of fuel and threw off its outer layers of gas, creating these stunning rings.

Stephan’s Quintet

Stephan’s Quintet is a group of 5 galaxies that is located an amazing 290 million light-years away. It was the first compact galaxy group ever discovered all the way back in 1877. Yeah somebody figured out this group of galaxies almost 150 years back. Genius.

The five galaxies are in close proximity. Four are interacting with each other and triggering abundant star formation.

If you look at the image closely, you can see the one in the upper left is a bit of the outsider in the group — it’s much closer to Earth than the other four, which actually are very close together. They are so close together that JWST can see shock waves from interactions between these galaxies as they tug at each other.

The red streaks and clumps towards the right side of the image, show the location of new star formation via the associated dust. Look also at the detail of the dust distribution and the tug-of-war taking place between the galaxies

What also stands out is the vast sea of distant galaxies in the background. Expect to see this in every JWST image, even when it points to sources within the Milky Way. That’s because infrared light passes through the dust. Webb’s infrared-detecting capabilities are so sensitive it will see right through objects within our galaxy.

This means you will get to see distant background galaxies in practically every JWST image. See if you can spot them in the Southern Ring and Carina images.

The above image is the biggest one JWST has taken yet and is a mosaic made with over 1,000 individual pictures taken by two instruments. (not getting into the names of those instruments, as it could get a little technical).

However, if you look at the same image with only one instrument of JWST, the image is equally spectacular —

SMACS 0723

The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago (roughly around the same time the Sun was born).

It is a massive galaxy cluster that contains thousands of galaxies clustered around a central super-bright galaxy squatting at the center. Don’t even try to imagine the distance. Your mind (and mine too) cannot fathom such distances. Just go with — It is very very very far away. And it took only 12.5 hours to create this for JWST.

This slice of the vast universe is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

If you look closely, you will notice the many elongated arcs, representing background galaxies that have been “gravitationally lensed” as a result of the cluster’s mass. In simple language, it means that the huge forces of gravity have resulted in the light from the galaxies becoming distorted (stretched) and amplified, providing a highly enhanced image of the distant universe.

Think of it like a cosmic magnifying glass bringing faint far-away galaxies into focus. Just like your zoom lens on a DSLR. Only this is a cosmic zoom lens.

Final Thoughts

We are at the absolute beginning of this astounding journey of the JWST. It is for the very first time that we are able to look so deep into our universe (only after the famous Hubble Space Telescope).

For the past three decades, the superstar of the skies has been Hubble, a NASA telescope launched in 1990 that has taken absolutely epic images of planets, stars, galaxies, nebulae, and so many other astronomical wonders.

Since it is based in low Earth orbit (570 km above our planet), Hubble could take detailed images of the cosmos without Earth’s atmosphere getting in the way, and the pictures that it took were astounding. In the past 32 years, it has made 1.5 million observations.

The ability for astronauts to visit the Hubble Space Telescope in low Earth orbit has kept it in action for a very long time. JWST will not have that advantage. Since it is situated nearly a million miles away, it’s too far away for the regular checkups that Hubble got.

For comparison, the Moon is 384,400km away. JWST is a million miles away. Yeah, a million miles away..!

The most exciting aspect of the JWST is that it will examine objects over 13.6 billion light-years away (remember one light year is equal to 9.6 trillion km).

Because of the time, it takes light to travel across the Universe, this means that the JWST will effectively be looking at objects 13.6 billion years ago, an estimated 100 to 250 million years just after the Big Bang. This is the furthest back in time ever observed by humanity.

I personally believe we are just getting started in this cosmic dance. Hubble Space Telescope was Version 1. JWST is Version 2 and still a new kid on the block in comparison to Hubble. It has been only been a couple of days since it started beaming these un-real literally out-of-the-world pictures.

JWST does have about 10 years worth of fuel on board, which means we can expect more of these breath-taking images coming our way.

Our Milky Way Galaxy is 120,000 light-years wide and with JWST we are just about scratching at the surface of our own galaxy. To explore what lies beyond our galaxy, the only thing we need to do is to be curious and keep looking up.

I know I will.

If you want to track what JWST is up to at this particular moment, you can track it directly from NASA’s website — https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html

Images, References, Credits & Sources —

• NASA
• Space.com —It's a great source of news about space exploration, innovation, and astronomy news.