Stunning images of a “stellar nursery” and a “cosmic dance” have been obtained by NASA‘s new $10bn space telescope.
On Tuesday, two images and others were presented to the world to mark the James Webb Observatory’s readiness to begin science operations. The facility has spent the past six months undergoing testing.
As the successor to the Hubble telescope, Webb is expected to be a significant force for exploration for at least the next 20 years.
The new observatory is a joint project of the US, European and Canadian space agencies – with Nasa in the lead.
Webb has been specially tuned to view the sky in the infrared, light at wavelengths our eyes can sense. This would give it the ability to look deeper into the universe than its predecessor and, as a result, trace events that occurred more than 13.5 billion years ago.
Astronomers will use its more advanced techniques to study the atmospheres of planets in our Milky Way Galaxy in hopes of detecting signs of life.
British researcher Professor Gillian Wright, the co-principal investigator on one of Webb’s four infrared instruments, said the initial batch of images was just a taster.
“Whenever you look at the sky in a new way, you see things you didn’t expect.
“The fact that these new data are so good, that they’re of such good quality, that they’ve been obtained in just a few hours of observations – that’s telling you that the discoveries are just sitting out there waiting to be made,” the director of the UK Astronomy Technology Centre said.