Only a few days left, and the project was the first full-color images and spectroscopic data the lab had captured. The agency has shed more light on what to expect by unveiling a preliminary list of JWST’s cosmic goals.
One of them is the Carina Nebula, which is about 7,600 light-years away. NASA says it is one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky and contains stars much larger than the Sun. Another nebula captured by binoculars is the Southern Ring. About 2,000 light-years from Earth, it is a planetary nebula – an expanding gas cloud around a dying star.
Closer to home is the gas planet WASP-96 b, about 1,150 light-years away and about half the mass of Jupiter. NASA will provide a look at the planet’s spectroscopic data. Not far from here is Stephen’s Quintet, about 290 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. It was the first small group of galaxies discovered in 1877. It includes five galaxies, NASA said, four of which are “trapped in a cosmic dance of successive close encounters”.
On Tuesday, NASA, and SMACS will reveal images of the year 0723. NASA explained that “large foreground galaxies enlarge and distort the light of objects behind them, allowing deep-field viewing of the most intrinsically weak and distant galaxy clusters.”
A team of experts from NASA, the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and the Space Telescope Science Institute spent five years identifying the first targets for Webb’s instruments. Full color images and spectral data captured by JSWT will be revealed. You can see them.
This represents an important step for JWST as it marks the official start of the laboratory’s general science operations. Its mission is to provide us with pictures and detailed information about the oldest stars and galaxies, as well as habitable exoplanets. It took several months for JWST to reach its destination for full functionality. We’re very close to figuring out what the lab can do.
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