The new space telescope is expected to outshine Hubble by orders of magnitude. The James Webb Space Telescope has been sending back images for some time now, and NASA is ready to start releasing them to the public. The above image is the first to be released, and it shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. It was revealed today at a White House event.
This first image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail. Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.
You can see it larger here. NASA, ESA, and CSA will release more images from the first collection on Tuesday during a televised broadcast at 10:30 AM EDT. They will then be available to the public. -via Fark
(Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI)
And there are over 2 trillion galaxies in the now-observable universe, which is about 100 billion light-years across.
It has been estimated that there are, as a minimum, 100,000 technical civilizations in this galaxy alone, which contains about 100 billion stars.
Yet there are those who think that we are alone in the universe.