The James Webb Space Telescope has been returning images for the past 12 months
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO production team
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is rapidly revolutionizing astronomy. The powerful observatory released its first batch of images on July 12, 2022, and has been broadcasting a steady stream of amazing sightings ever since. These are eight of the most stunning and fascinating images of his first year of science – a small fraction of what it is expected to achieve in the coming years.
Deep field
![The James Webb Space Telescope has been returning images for the past 12 months](https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/11172735/SEI_163701971.jpg?width=1200&quality=100)
One of the first images released was “Webb’s First Deep Field”, at the time the deepest image of the cosmos ever taken. JWST has since taken deeper images, but for many astronomers this image was the first herald of a new era in astronomy. Several of the galaxies in this image had never been seen before and appear to be the most distant galaxies ever observed or examined in detail – discoveries that could improve our understanding of the early universe.
Pillars of Creation
![Pillars of Creation](https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/11161720/SEI_163691406.jpg?width=1200&quality=100)
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Eagle-eyed readers may recognize these towering spires of dust and gas as the Pillars of Creation, a star-forming region in the Eagle Nebula. The area was the subject of one of the most famous astronomical images of all time, created with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, and JWST built on that legacy by showing billowing clouds in greater detail than ever before and shedding light on the process of star formation.
Jupiter
![Jupiter](https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/11161726/SEI_163691264_1689088643.329.jpg?width=1200&quality=100)
NASA, ESA, CSA and Jupiter ERS team. Image processing by Judy Schmidt
JWST doesn’t spend all its time gazing into the depths of the distant universe – this image of Jupiter is perhaps the most beautiful image of any of the planets in our own solar system. It shows the planet’s northern and southern aurora in light blue, as well as its tenuous rings and two of its small moons. The inner workings of giant planets remain somewhat mysterious to researchers, who hope photos like this show how the different layers within these massive worlds interact.
cartwheel system
![Cartwheel Galaxy](https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/11161730/SEI_1636901711.jpg?width=1200&quality=100)
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO production team
This is the Cartwheel galaxy, one of the weirdest galaxies in the universe. It was probably once a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way, until one of its companion galaxies shot right through its center in a perfect bullseye, creating ripples of stars and gas that created the nested ring shapes seen in this image. In previous images, the details are obscured by clouds of dust, but JWST’s ability to peer through that shroud allowed researchers to analyze it in more detail and find unexpected bursts of star formation in the aftermath of the galaxy’s collapse. striking appearance gave shape.
WR 124
![WR 124](https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/11161735/SEI_1636901341.jpg?width=1200&quality=100)
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO production team
The star at the center of this image is about to go supernova. Called WR 124, it is a Wolf-Rayet star, a star that is beginning to shed its outer layers as it is about to explode. This happens because the star runs out of hydrogen to fuse in its core and instead begins to burn through heavier elements, creating a powerful wind that removes the gas and dust in the outer layers of the star and creates a cloud as shown in purple. here. In a few million years, all the extraordinary detail in this image will disappear as WR 124 explodes dramatically.
Phantom galaxy
![Phantom galaxy](https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/11161735/SEI_163689334.jpg?width=1200&quality=100)
ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST team. Image processing by Judy Schmidt
This ghostly spiral is actually the center of a spiral galaxy, but with the intricate details of its arms revealed by JWST’s unique infrared capabilities. Called M74 or the Phantom Galaxy, it is about 32 million light-years from Earth. The tendrils of dust and gas that make up the spiral arms spiral outward from the center of the galaxy, which appears unexpectedly empty except for the cluster of hot, blue stars. Pictures like this will help astronomers not only understand star formation, but also understand the evolution of galaxies.
WR 140
![WR 140](https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/11161739/SEI_163689236.jpg?width=1200&quality=100)
NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/JPL-Caltech
The rings in this image may seem like a simple camera artifact, but they’re amazingly real. Named WR 140, this galaxy contains a Wolf-Rayet star and a supergiant that has about 20 times the mass of the Sun. The rings are made of carbon-rich dust, which is blown out of the stars and scattered around them every time they orbit each other, so they can be used a bit like the rings in a tree trunk to track over a century of dust production. In all, the rings extend more than 10 trillion kilometers from the stars, and the dust from such rings could be crucial in spreading carbon into the universe, where it is later incorporated into new stars and planets.
Southern Ring Nebula
![Southern Ring Nebula](https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/11161714/SEI_1636925381.jpg?width=1200&quality=100)
Both images show the Southern Ring Nebula, a vast expanse of dust and gas formed by a deadly dance of at least four stars all orbiting each other. The primary star at the center of the nebula has gone through several periods of shedding of its outer layers, after which the surrounding stars swirl through it, stirring up the hot gas in the strands and arcs visible in these JWST images. The image on the left shows the gas covering the entire nebula, while the image on the right penetrates that gas to show the stars within it. Until JWST, we only knew of two stars embedded in the nebula, but these new images revealed there are four or five of them — like so many other cosmic objects, this billowing cloud is much more complex than anyone realized.
Subjects:
- astronomy/
- James Webb space telescope