Washington: The James Webb Space Telescope of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has revealed the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the early universe which probably shows the view of the universe up to 13 billion years ago.
The stunning photo was released by US President Joe Biden at the White House and shows countless stars and thousands of galaxies. It also has glimpses of distant blurred galaxies. The image also contains two images of a giant gaseous planet and nebula outside our solar system.
A nebula is a place where stars are born and destroyed. Apart from this, 5 dense galaxies are also seen around each other.
''Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb's view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length by someone on the ground,'' said an official statement by NASA.
It further added that this deep field, taken by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours – achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope's deepest fields, which took weeks.
The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago.
The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it. Webb's NIRCam has brought those distant galaxies into sharp focus – they have tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features, the statement added.
''Researchers will soon begin to learn more about the galaxies' masses, ages, histories, and compositions, as Webb seeks the earliest galaxies in the universe,'' it avowed.
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