During a perfectly orchestrated communication operation from the White House, on July 11 at the end of the day (on the night of July 11 to 12 in France), and in the presence of the American President, Joe Biden, NASA unveiled the first-ever color image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). In particular, it shows a cluster of galaxies called SMACS 0723, located about 4 billion light-years from Earth. It is therefore the light emitted by the stars of these galaxies 4 billion years ago that we observe on this photograph.
“Twelve and a half hours were needed to produce the image taken by the near-infrared Webb camera. It is extremely promising: in the coming months, Webb should produce other images of areas extremely distant from the Earth in his search for the very first galaxies in the Universe”. detailed Science. New images will be published this July 12 during the day. During the presentation at the White House, Bill Nelson, the head of NASA, said:
“We will even be able to answer questions that we have never asked ourselves before.”
Here are three of the main questions that the JWST could help to clarify.
1. Where and when exactly did the first stars form?
Many scientists have already programmed projects involving JWST data to answer this question. Jeyhan Kartaltepe, an astrophysicist at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, for example, will have at her disposal two hundred and fifty-six hours of observation – one of the longest durations of the first observation cycle of the telescope, according to the New Scientist – to answer a wide range of questions about the cosmic dawn.
The cosmic dawn marks the end of the Dark Ages of our Universe – the period from approx.