{"id":1552491,"date":"2022-07-13T12:35:56","date_gmt":"2022-07-13T16:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1552491"},"modified":"2022-07-13T12:36:18","modified_gmt":"2022-07-13T16:36:18","slug":"nasa-draws-back-curtain-on-webb-space-telescopes-first-full-color-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/nasa-draws-back-curtain-on-webb-space-telescopes-first-full-color-images\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA draws back curtain on Webb space telescope\u2019s first full-color images"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fnasa-draws-back-curtain-on-webb-space-telescopes-first-full-color-images%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1552491&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>By Joey Roulette and Steve Gorman<\/p>\n<p>GREENBELT, Md. (Reuters) \u2013     NASA on Tuesday drew back the curtain on billions of years of cosmic evolution with the inaugural batch of photos from the largest, most powerful observatory ever launched to space, saying the luminous imagery showed the telescope exceeds expectations.<\/p>\n<p>The first full-color, high-resolution pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope, designed to peer farther than before with greater clarity to the dawn of the universe, were hailed by NASA as milestone marking a new era of astronomical exploration.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly two decades in the making and built under contract for NASA by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp, the $9 billion infrared telescope was launched on Dec. 25, 2021. It reached its destination in solar orbit nearly 1 million miles from Earth a month later.<\/p>\n<p>With Webb finely tuned after months spent remotely aligning its mirrors and calibrating its instruments, scientists will embark on a competitively selected agenda exploring the evolution of galaxies, life cycle of stars, atmospheres of distant exoplanets, and moons of our outer solar system.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll of us are just blown away,\u201d Amber Straughn, Webb deputy project scientist at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said among a panel of experts who briefed reporters following the big reveal.<\/p>\n<p>Whoops and hollers from a sprightly \u201ccheer team\u201d welcomed some 300 scientists, telescope engineers, politicians and senior officials from NASA and its international partners into a packed and auditorium at Goddard for the official unveiling.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t know I was coming to a pep rally,\u201d NASA Administrator James Nelson said from the stage, enthusing that Webb\u2019s \u201cevery image is a discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The event was simulcast to watch parties of astronomy enthusiasts worldwide, from Bhopal, India, to Vancouver, British Columbia.     <\/p>\n<p>The first photos, which took weeks to render from raw telescope data, were selected by NASA to show off Webb\u2019s capabilities and foreshadow science missions ahead.<\/p>\n<p>The crowning debut image, previewed on Monday by U.S. President Biden but displayed with greater fanfare on Tuesday, was a \u201cdeep field\u201d photo of a distant galaxy cluster, SMACS 0723, revealing the most detailed glimpse of the early universe recorded to date.<\/p>\n<p>At least one faint galaxy measured among the thousands in the image is nearly 95% as old as the Big Bang, the theoretical flashpoint that set the expansion of the known universe in motion some 13.8 billion years ago, NASA said.    <\/p>\n<p>Among the four other Webb subjects getting their closeups on Tuesday were two enormous clouds of gas and dust blasted into space by stellar explosions to form incubators for new stars \u2013 the Carina Nebula and the Southern Ring Nebula, each thousands of light years away from Earth.<\/p>\n<p>The collection also included fresh images of another galaxy cluster known as Stephan\u2019s Quintet, first discovered in 1877, which encompasses several galaxies NASA described as \u201clocked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Apart from the imagery, NASA presented Webb\u2019s first spectrographic analysis of a Jupiter-sized exoplanet more than 1,100 light years away \u2013 revealing the molecular signatures of filtered light passing through its atmosphere, including the presence of water vapor. Scientists have raised the possibility of eventually detecting water on the surface of smaller, rockier Earth-like exoplanets in the future.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018PIECE OF ART\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Built to view its subjects chiefly in the infrared spectrum, Webb is about 100 times more sensitive than its 30-year-old predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, which operates mainly at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.<\/p>\n<p>The much larger light-collecting surface of Webb\u2019s primary mirror \u2013 an array of 18 hexagonal segments of gold-coated beryllium metal \u2013 enables it to observe objects at greater distances, thus further back in time, than any other telescope. Its infrared optics allow Webb to detect a wider range of celestial objects and see through clouds of dust and gas that obscure light in the visible spectrum.<\/p>\n<p>All five of Webb\u2019s introductory targets were previously known to scientists, but NASA officials said Webb\u2019s early imagery proved it works as designed, better than expected, while literally capturing its subjects in an entirely new light.<\/p>\n<p>The image of Southern Ring Nebula, for instance, clearly showed the dying stellar object at its center was a binary pair of stars closely orbiting one another. The new Carina Nebula photos exposed contours of its massive clouds never seen before.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is an art piece that has been revealed by this telescope,\u201d Rene Doyon, principal investigator for the observatory\u2019s Canadian-built near-infrared camera and spectrograph. \u201cIt goes beyond my scientific mind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The SMACS 0723 image showed a 4.6 billion-year-old galaxy cluster whose combined mass acts as a \u201cgravitational lens,\u201d distorting space to greatly magnify light coming from more distant galaxies behind it.<\/p>\n<p>One of the older galaxies appearing in the \u201cbackground\u201d of the photo \u2013 a composite of images of different wavelengths of light \u2013 dates back about 13.1 billion years.<\/p>\n<p>The bejeweled-like photo, according to NASA, offers the \u201cmost detailed view of the early universe\u201d as well as the \u201cdeepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant cosmos\u201d yet taken.<\/p>\n<p>Underscoring the vastness of the universe, the thousands of galaxies appearing in the SMACS 0723 image appear in a tiny patch of sky roughly the size of a sand grain held at arm\u2019s length by someone standing on Earth.<\/p>\n<p>The Webb telescope is an international collaboration led by NASA in partnership with the European and Canadian space agencies.<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Joey Roulette in Greenbelt, Md.; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Nick Zieminski and Richard Chang)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/?attachment_id=2725790\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI6B0OR-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI6B0OR-VIEWIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/?attachment_id=2725792\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dzm0ugdauank9.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportTechnologyNews\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI6B0R0-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI6B0R0-VIEWIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/?attachment_id=2725795\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI6B0R1-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI6B0R1-VIEWIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/?attachment_id=2725796\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI6B0OS-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI6B0OS-VIEWIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/?attachment_id=2725797\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI6B0O2-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI6B0O2-VIEWIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/?attachment_id=2725798\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI6B0NG-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI6B0NG-VIEWIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/?attachment_id=2725799\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI6B0BR-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI6B0BR-VIEWIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Joey Roulette and Steve Gorman GREENBELT, Md. (Reuters) \u2013 NASA on Tuesday drew back the curtain on billions of years of cosmic evolution with the inaugural batch of photos<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1552491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1552491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1552491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1552491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1552491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}