To infinity and beyond ! Admire the first shots of the James-Webb Telescope

After months of travel, calibration and checks, the first photo of the universe captured by the James-Webb Space Super Telescope has been made public. It is the most distant cluster of galaxies ever observed, and therefore the youngest.

The James-Webb Space Telescope is a juggernaut in its field. This technological jewel with a primary mirror 6.5 m in diameter, posted 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, cost nearly 10 billion dollars. It had been launched in December 2021 by an Ariane 5 rocket. And since then, between the deployment and calibration phases, we have been impatiently waiting for a first “real” photo. On July 12, 2022, with great fanfare and presented by a Joe Biden with tremolos in his voice, NASA formalized the first shot taken by the space telescope.

A galactic cluster 4.6 billion light-years away

It is a cluster of galaxies with the poetic name of SMACS 0723, located 4.6 billion light-years from our blue planet. This cluster actually serves as a gravitational lens that allows us to perceive galaxies placed at the edge of the universe, and therefore to go back in time.

From the light that came from the tender childhood of the universe

The light of certain structures of matter thus took more than 13.6 billion years to reach us. This means that thanks to James-Webb, we observe galaxies that were born very soon after the Big Bang and the matter-light decoupling. A major breakthrough for astrophysics and… fans. It took 12.5 hours of telescope observation to record “the deepest and clearest infrared image ever taken of the distant universe”says NASA.

? Sneak a peek at the deepest & sharpest infrared image of the early universe ever taken — all in a day’s work for the Webb telescope. (Literally, capturing it took less than a day!) This is Webb’s first image released as we begin to #UnfoldTheUniverse: https://t.co/tlougFWg8Bpic.twitter.com/Y7ebmQwT7j

—NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) July 11, 2022

And that’s just the beginning !

James-Webb then turned his mirror to five targets in space: WASP-96b, Stephan’s Quintet, the Carina Nebula and the Southern Ring Nebula. These last two being located “only” 7600 and 2000 light-years away, these images are thus of unparalleled richness and detail, well helped by NASA artists magnifying each time the raw data captured by the telescope. .