Cosmic Sights Galore: NASA Reveals First James Webb Space Telescope Images
NASA has finally revealed the first batch of observations taken by the James Webb Telescope, which includes an infrared analysis of a planet outside our solar system.
The first observation focused on a planet called WASP-96b, a gas giant that resides about 1,150 light years away. James Webb Telescope has taken a “spectrum(Opens in a new window)” of WASP-96b, which involves analyzing the light emitted from the planet as it crosses over its parent star.
The spectrum indicates the presence of water and the evidence of clouds over the planet, which the telescope confirmed for the first time, according(Opens in a new window) to NASA.
The second observation focuses on the Southern Ring Nebula, which is about 2,500 light years away. The nebula is made up of a dying star that has ejected its outer layer, forming a shell of gas. Ground-based telescopes have taken images of the nebula before, but the James Webb Telescope is now giving astronomers a far more detailed view of the cosmic cloud.
The image on the left is a near-infrared image, which shows the colorful structure to the nebula’s gas shell. The right-hand image was taken in mid-infrared. The imaging reveals the presence of a second star in the nebula’s center, which is surrounded in dust, making it hard for other telescopes to see.
The third observation covers Stephan’s Quintet, a grouping of five galaxies, which mainly resides about 300 million light years away. The image itself “contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files,” NASA says(Opens in a new window).
The space agency adds: “Webb shows never-before-seen details in this galaxy group. Sparkling clusters of millions of young stars and starburst regions of fresh star
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