JWST’s Dazzling Images Whet the Appetite for More

Today’s release of more images and data from the James Webb Space Telescope did not disappoint. The dazzling views of the universe are just the beginning of what JWST will reveal as it begins 20 years of operation.

NASA and its partners at the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and the Space Telescope Science Institute deliberately chose this first set of results to showcase what JWST’s instruments can do.

The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) was provided jointly by NASA and the European Consortium (led by the U.K.) with ESA, the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) by the University of Arizona, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) by ESA, and Fine Guidance Sensor/Near InfraRed Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (FGS/NIRISS) by CSA.

President Biden and Vice President Harris showed off the first JWST deep field last night at the White House.

Three more images and a set of spectra were shared today by NASA and its partners at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. Goddard manages the JWST program.

Full resolution versions with details on what they show are on NASA’s Webb First Images website.

The Southern Ring Nebula or NGC3132 shows two stars orbiting each other. The left NIRCam image is in the near-infared, while the right image is in the mid-infrared from MIRI. The fainter star is a white dwarf at the end of its life and has been shedding rings of dust and gas for thousands of years. The brighter star is earlier in its evolution and as they orbit each other they “stir the pot” of gas and dust creating the swirling patterns.

Five galaxies grouped together and known as Stephan’s Quintet was discovered in 1877 by the French astronomer Èdouard Stephan and is featured in the holiday movie It’s a Wonderful Life, but JWST is seeing it in a new light.  Although called a quintet, one of the five is quite distant from the others — just 40 million light years away from us while the others are 290 million light years away — but that is still close in cosmic terms. Most dramatically, it shows two of the galaxies colliding with each other. Also MIRI and NIRCam “pierced through the shroud of dust surrounding the nucleus” to reveal a black hole, or actually hot gas outflows driven by the black hole since the black hole itself isn’t visible.

The Carina Nebula produced the most appreciative gasps from the audience at today’s event. Dubbed the Cosmic Cliffs, what seems like mountains and valleys “actually is the edge of the giant, gaseous cavity” within the young, star-forming region of the nebula designated NGC 3324.  NIRCam and MIRI data were used to create this image that shows hundreds of stars and numerous background galaxies not seen before and structures embedded in the dust and stellar sources of massive jets and outflows.

Breathtaking pictures may capture the imagination more easily than squiggly lines from a spectrograph, but spectra are just as crucial in understanding the universe. In this case, NIRISS collected new data about the atmosphere of exoplanet WASP 96-B. More than 5,000 exoplanets have been confirmed in our galaxy, the Milky Way. WASP 96-B is 1,150 light years away and is a gas giant unlike any in our solar system.  Although its atmosphere has been studied with other instruments, NIRISS found “the umbiguous signature of water, indications of haze, and evidence of clouds” not seen previously.

The mood at Goddard was celebratory with cheerleaders racing down the aisle to kick things off.  NASA Administrator Bill Nelson joked that he didn’t realize he was coming to a pep rally, but “that’s all the better and you have a lot to be rallying for.”  He said Biden and Harris “were like kids” at the White House event last night “and asked just a million questions.”

Maryland’s two Senators, Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, and the Representatives whose districts include Goddard (House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer) and nearby areas (Rep. David Trone) were there to praise NASA and the JWST team. “America thanks you and the world community thanks you,” Hoyer said.