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James Webb Space Telescope celebrates first year of operation with jaw-dropping image
An “unprecedented” close-up image of the nearest star-forming region to Earth was released by NASA on Wednesday 12th July 2023. The release marked the first year of operation of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The first image from the Webb was released on 11th July 2022 when US President Joe Biden unveiled a deep field picture of thousands of galaxies in the galactic cluster SMACS 0723 during a public event at the White House in Washington. The region in the Webb's latest image is called the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. Lying 390 light years away from Earth, it is a molecular cloud, a giant mass of dust and gas in space, the size and density of which enables molecules—most commonly hydrogen—to form. Eventually, new stars emerge.
Updated 19th July 2023
The Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex contains approximately 50 young stars, most of them similar in mass to the Sun or smaller. The long red cloud extending from the bottom right hand corner to the top of the image actually consists of two plumes of molecular hydrogen, made to glow red by jets of energy blasting out from a new star (which is itself obscured by a dark dust cloud).
One much larger star than our Sun, a massive blue star called S1, sits in the lower half of the image. Subatomic particles streaming out from it in all directions (solar wind) have hollowed out a "cave" in the glowing yellow material that surrounds it.
Shadows seen around some of the stars reveal the presence of protoplanetary discs. These are distinctive features of the early stages in planet formation and provide visual evidence for how our own Solar System probably evolved 4.6 billion years ago.
The Webb telescope is designed to view the Universe in infrared rather than visible light, which makes it particularly suitable for observing galaxies that formed many billions of years ago, during the early years of the Universe. This is because the light that left these galaxies has lost energy as it travels billions of light years to reach Earth. The light's wavelength shifts towards the red end of the visible spectrum, a process called "redshift". Light from very distant galaxies is redshifted so much that it reaches the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The Webb telescope was launched on Christmas Day 2021 as a partnership between NASA and the European and Canadian space agencies. By providing incredible high-resolution images of objects billions of light years away—for example, early galaxies formed just 350 million years after the Big Bang (the sudden burst of energy in which the Universe was formed)—it has allowed us to view the early stages of the Universe itself.
In the words of NASA's administrator, Bill Nelson: “In just one year, the James Webb Space Telescope has transformed humanity’s view of the cosmos, peering into dust clouds and seeing light from faraway corners of the Universe for the very first time.”
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