Monday, January 01, 2024

The sheer beauty of our Universe: amazing images from James Webb telescope, two years after launch

HERE is a reminder of the beauty of our Universe. These wondrous pictures, a great feat by mankind, seem to give an ethereal glimpse into the after life.

 

From BBC News  Science

By Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent 

Dated Monday, 1 January 2024


Amazing images from James Webb telescope, two years after launch


ORION NEBULA

The famous star forming region can just about be seen by the naked eye as a smudge on the sky. It would take a spaceship travelling at light-speed a little over four years to traverse this Webb scene.


The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was launched to orbit just two years ago, but already it's starting to redefine our view of the early Universe.


Marvel at the extraordinary collection of James Webb pictures on this page - from the most distant reaches of the Universe to the nearby familiar objects in our own Solar System.


It's amazing to think that imaging isn't actually the telescope's majority workload.


More than 70% of its time is spent doing spectroscopy. That's sampling the light from objects and slicing it up into its "rainbow" colours. It's how you retrieve key information about the chemistry, temperature, density and velocity of the targets under study.


"You could think of Webb as a giant spectrograph that takes the occasional nice picture," joked Dr Smith.


Contributors

Written by Jonathan Amos with additional reporting by Rebecca Morelle, Alison Francis and Tony Jolliffe. Production by Mike Hills and Dominic Bailey, design by Kate Gaynor and development by Becky Rush. Images: NASA/ESA/CSA.


Full story and images: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-611525eb-3a0c-4a68-bf54-485df138b6f6


ENDS

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