It’s been almost two weeks since NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) revealed the first images of the Universe that it captured using its powerful gears. We’re talking about the most powerful space telescope ever built by astronomers and the successor to Hubble, the over three-decades-old telescope.
Webb caught images showing the Carina Nebula, Stephan’s Quintet of five galaxies, the Southern Ring Nebula, WASP-96b, as well as the SMACS 0723 collection of galaxies and stars.
B.C. astrophysicist Tyrone Woods now comes to give us more insight regarding those majestic cosmic structures, and you are free to listen to him via the following video of just about 6 minutes long:
The astrophysicist begins speaking about SMACS 0723, saying that it’s a structure located billions of light-years away. We were practically having an image of the Universe when it was a lot younger. That’s 4.5 billion years ago, to be more precise, meaning a period when our Solar System was just starting its formation. Woods also adds that the cluster of galaxies is so massive that it shows Einstein’s relativity in action since it’s warping space and time around it.
Luckily, James Webb hasn’t been occupied only with aspects regarding the distant Universe. It has also brought images of our own cosmic “neighborhood.” A photo showing planet Jupiter and a few of its moons was also captured by Webb and presented after the very first images of the telescope came out. Jupiter has a total of 79 discovered moons.
We’re expecting many more images from Webb regarding the distant Universe, as what we’ve seen until now might have only been the beginning of what the space telescope is capable of.
Surprisingly enough, NASA is even considering changing the name of the James Webb Space Telescope, and we’re expecting to find out more about the subject soon enough.
