The first image was taken by the James Webb Space Telescope

The first picture was made by James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)The largest and most powerful space telescope ever made, was unveiled this evening by the President of the United States, Joe Biden. It shows, in levels of detail never before reached for this type of image, a group of galaxies 5 billion light-years away from us with other galaxies far beyond them.

The presentation was made shortly after 6 p.m. on Monday in Washington, DC (in Italy that was only Tuesday), as an expectation in light of the press conference scheduled for Tuesday, July 12 in which NASA – along with the European Space Agency (ESA) – is participating. ) and Canadian (CSA) – will display other images that provide more scientific information about observed celestial bodies and telescope conditions.

The new image was calledThe Web’s First Deep FieldIt can be considered a development, particularly in terms of resolution, with regard to Similar pictures It was made in the past by the Hubble Space Telescope, of which JWST is a kind of heir. The long exposure image, to collect as much light as possible, was taken on about a day of telescope activity, capturing light sources up to 100 times less bright than Hubble’s ability. The galaxy cluster (SMACS 0723) appears in the image as it was about 4.6 billion years ago, when light from its stars and reflected from other celestial bodies began its journey back to Earth.

Characteristics and structures of the cluster galaxies that have hitherto not been able to be observed in such detail in the infrared, show electromagnetic radiation at a frequency lower than the frequency of visible light that our eyes cannot detect, but which allows observing bright objects at a very great distance.

Launched on December 25, 2021, JWST has traveled millions of kilometers in recent months to reach a point, at a safe distance from Earth, from which it can observe the universe as it has never been done before. For weeks, NASA has been working to calibrate the telescope’s instruments and make sure they are working as expected, collecting different types of data and taking measurements.

JWST in an image taken on December 1, 2017, after being extracted from a large test environment that reproduces the vacuum and low-temperature conditions in space (NASA/Chris Gunn via flickr)

In the next few years, JWST will allow us to observe galaxies very far away, allowing us to travel back in time, and show us celestial bodies that are billions of light years away from us, so far away that they were among the first galaxies to have occurred during the turbulent phase. The universe formed about 13.8 billion years ago.