The first scientific snapshot of the James Webb telescope has just been unveiled

The US Space Agency has released the first official image from the James Webb Telescope, providing an unprecedented glimpse of a part of the cosmos billions of light-years away.

Galactic Cluster SMACS0723

Launched in December 2021, the powerful James Webb Space Telescope had deployed without incident at the beginning of January and its instruments had been able to be finely calibrated during the following months. Having suffered a micrometeoroid impact without consequence at the end of May, the device is now ready to observe the cosmos, as its first real scientific snapshot proves.

Component the deepest and sharpest view of the distant Universe,
this covers a section of space (about the size of a grain of sand that would be held at arm’s length looking up at the sky) home to thousands of galaxies, including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared .

To get this composite image of the galactic cluster SMACS0723, as it was 4.6 billion years ago, NASA researchers used the James Webb Telescope’s NIRCAM instrument. Covering different near-infrared wavelengths, the snapshots used were captured over a 12.5 hour observation period. By comparison, it had taken several weeks for Hubble to obtain its ” deep field which obviously possessed much less resolution.

A fascinating first look at the capabilities of the James Webb Telescope

” This first shot is as spectacular as we hoped “says Matthew Colless, of the Australian National University. ” A tiny sliver of the universe has been imaged more sharply than ever before, revealing myriad galaxies, the most distant of which are magnified by the ‘gravitational lens’ produced by a massive cluster in the foreground, according to the theory. of Einstein’s general relativity. »

Of course, this is just a glimpse of the capabilities of the most powerful tool mankind has ever devised to peer into the cosmos. NASA plans to release new images captured by the telescope in the coming days.