How the James Webb Space Telescope has revealed a surprisingly bright, complex and element-filled early universe
The Hindu
Webb was specifically designed to be able to see as far back as possible into the earliest days of the universe.
If you want to know what happened in the earliest years of the universe, you are going to need a very big, very specialised telescope. Much to the joy of astronomers and space fans everywhere, the world has one – the James Webb Space Telescope.
We talked to three experts about what astronomers have learned about the first galaxies in the universe and how just six months of data from James Webb is already changing astronomy.
The James Webb Space Telescope was successfully launched into space on December 25, 2021. After about six months of travel, setup and calibration, the telescope began collecting data and NASA published the first stunning images.
One of Webb’s nicknames is the “first light telescope.” This is because Webb was specifically designed to be able to see as far back as possible into the earliest days of the universe and detect some of the first visible light.
You can see these galaxies in the images NASA has released.
Jonathan Trump, an astronomer at the University of Connecticut, is on one of the teams working on some of the early James Webb data. He was watching the release of the first images live and noticed some things many nonastronomers might have missed.
“In the background, behind these beautiful arcs and spirals and massive elliptical galaxies are these tiny, itty-bitty red smudges. That’s what I was most interested in, because those are some of the first galaxies in the universe.”