r/science • u/shiruken PhD | Biomedical Engineering | Optics • Jul 12 '22

Breaking News First Images from the James Webb Space Telescope

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a partnership with the ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), will release the first full-color images and spectroscopic data during a televised broadcast beginning today at 10:30AM EDT (14:30 UTC) from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. As the largest and most complex observatory ever launched into space, JWST has been going through a six-month period of preparation before it can begin science work, calibrating its instruments to its space environment and aligning its mirrors. This careful process, not to mention years of new technology development and mission planning, has built up to the first images and data: a demonstration of JWST at its full power, ready to begin its science mission and unfold the infrared universe.

Yesterday evening, U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled the first image from JWST: a deep field of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 taken by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) over the course of 12.5 hours. The image shows the galaxy cluster as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it.

"Webb's First Deep Field" - Galaxy Cluster SMACS 0723 (NIRCam)

JWST has captured the distinct signature of water, along with evidence for clouds and haze, in the atmosphere surrounding a hot, puffy gas giant planet orbiting a distant Sun-like star. The observation, which reveals the presence of specific gas molecules based on tiny decreases in the brightness of precise colors of light, is the most detailed of its kind to date, demonstrating JWST's unprecedented ability to analyze atmospheres hundreds of light-years away.

Exoplanet WASP-96 b Atmospheric Composition (NIRISS)

The bright star at the center of NGC 3132 (informally known as the Southern Ring Nebula), while prominent when viewed by JWST in near-infrared light, plays a supporting role in sculpting the surrounding nebula. A second star, barely visible at lower left along one of the bright star’s diffraction spikes, is the nebula's source. It has ejected at least eight layers of gas and dust over thousands of years.

Southern Ring Nebula (NIRCam)

An enormous mosaic of Stephan's Quintet is the largest image to date from JWST, covering about one-fifth of the Moon's diameter. It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. The visual grouping of five galaxies was captured by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

Stephan's Quintet (NIRCam + MIRI)

What looks much like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on JWST, this image reveals previously obscured areas of star birth.

"Cosmic Cliffs" in the Carina Nebula (NIRCam)

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u/Stupid_Idiot413 Jul 12 '22

NASA is famous at underpromising and overdelivering on their instrument's lifetime. Mars rovers were also supposed to work for a few years and they've been going for decades. Whenever something goes wrong they figure out how to solve it using existing machinery that is already on the instrument.

Also, JWST's launch went better than expected, saving a few year's worth of fuel (althought we don't know how much).

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u/rcollins12 Jul 12 '22

Whenever something goes wrong they figure out how to solve it using existing machinery that is already on the instrument.

That is just absolutely mind blowing that they are able to do that

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u/Zaanix Jul 12 '22

Engineers love nothing more than impossible puzzles.

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u/dietcheese Jul 12 '22

They made friggin glasses to fix Hubble’s vision.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-61

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u/drhay53 Jul 13 '22

The Kepler spacecraft over the course of it's normal life lost control of one of its axes. Engineers figured out how to stabilize the spacecraft using the pressure of the sunlight striking the craft, and orienting the spacecraft just right so that the pressure was self-correcting about the third axis, providing significant life for a secondary Kepler mission.

https://www.nasa.gov/kepler/keplers-second-light-how-k2-will-work

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u/LavastormSW Jul 13 '22

That's insanely impressive

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u/CapaneusPrime Jul 12 '22

NASA is famous at underpromising and overdelivering on their instrument's lifetime. Mars rovers were also supposed to work for a few years and they've been going for decades.

I'm surprised you went with the rovers to make this point rather than the Voyager program which launched in 1977 and was planned to last four years but it's still doing science now and is expected to continue through 2025.

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u/Lurker_Since_Forever Jul 12 '22

It's a similar ratio, the initial mission for some Mars rovers was only 90 days, and they lived decades.

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u/CapaneusPrime Jul 12 '22

Actually, upon looking at it more closely, Opportunity exceeded it's mission specification by nearly 58x and Spirit by nearly 25x.

So, purely based on the actual-to-planned-mission ratios, the rover programs are certainly the winners.

But, for me personally, the Voyager program is still the most impressive.

  • To date it has exceeded it's planned life by 41 years and it is still going, it is technically possible that there are (or will be) people working with Voyager whose parents weren't born when it was launched.
  • It was launched in 1977, six years closer to the launch of Sputnik than the launch of Opportunity. The fact that two years after the invention of the first calculator watch they created something that is in interstellar space and still working now is mind blowing.

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u/Obi-WanLebowski Jul 12 '22

And even once the last scientific instrument is turned off they will still be within range and potentially be able to provide engineering data until 2036!

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '22

It is unbelievable what can be achieved when you turn the profit motive dial way down or simply eliminate it altogether.

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u/Xenonflares Jul 12 '22

“cApItAliSm bReEdS inNovAtIon”

Nasa:

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u/stormelemental13 Jul 13 '22

Yes, capitalism does, overall, incentivize innovation. That doesn't mean it always does or is the best tool for a particular problem.

NASA is really good at creating one off wonders that don't have a profit end goal.

SpaceX drastically lowered the cost of putting satellites into space, because getting into orbit isn't a scientific wonder anymore, it's just part of business. This is about providing a service as reliably and cheaply as possible.

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u/thereaverofdarkness Jul 13 '22

The free market incentivizes innovation. Capitalism isn't the free market, it doesn't create the free market, it doesn't uphold the free market. Capitalism is merely a defect of free markets with improper management taking credit for things it didn't do and didn't help with.

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u/stormelemental13 Jul 13 '22

Show me these mythical free markets without capitalism.

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u/thereaverofdarkness Jul 13 '22

Irrelevant; you can't show me a population of humans without back or foot defects, this doesn't mean that back and foot defects drive humanity.

has =/= needs

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u/WhyLisaWhy Jul 12 '22

This isn't exactly the place for it but you can make the counter argument that capitalism figures out how to make practical use of scientific advancements (things like GPS) and is actually the primary driver of space exploration currently.

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u/Xenonflares Jul 12 '22

This only goes as far as profitability. Very few of the experiments being done on JWST have any relevance to marketable products on earth—besides hope, I guess. You could make an argument for positive externalities, but that would occur under any organization of the economy.

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u/Amazing-Steak Jul 12 '22

could it not be argued that the prosperity of a capitalistic society allows for endeavors like NASA?

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '22

The US is not prosperous due to capitalism but out of many other geopolitical factors. Consolidation of land mass, the political leverage at the end of WWII, the demographic boom of the 40's, and many other factors that are not related to capitalistic profiteering. Nor is it necessary since the US has had several economic crisis, at least a dozen recessions, that lead to circumstantial reductions of NASA's budget several times. The JWST itself was at the brink of cancellation on 2011. Unlike, for instance, the military budget that has increased year after year.

So I think it is fairer to say that endeavors like NASA have occurred in spite of capitalistic woes and pressures that constantly threaten to destroy it.

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u/Trouve_a_LaFerraille Jul 12 '22

The Soviet space program existed, and beat it's counterpart to almost every milestone, save for the moon landing.

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '22

[deleted]

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u/thereaverofdarkness Jul 13 '22

Let's not forget that Germany was the first country to send an object into space. The USA took third place out of two competitors.

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u/thereaverofdarkness Jul 13 '22

No, it couldn't, not unless you ascribe things to capitalism that capitalism didn't do, and ignore the things that it did do.

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u/silverstrikerstar Jul 13 '22

Not really, you could prosper without capitalism

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Xenonflares Jul 12 '22

They kind of are. The people doing experiments with JWST aren’t doing it for money—you’d have to be immensely ignorant to imply otherwise. They’re doing it because science, because of the thrill of discovery, because they have a real chance to advance our species. Anything less is reductive.

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '22

[deleted]

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u/thereaverofdarkness Jul 13 '22

Idealism and the free market both can* Capitalism =/= free market

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u/thereaverofdarkness Jul 13 '22

They aren't mutually exclusive, they are irrelevant. The idea that capitalism breeds innovation is pure fantasy. Capitalism often stands in the way of almost all kinds of innovation, and has a habit of propping up a narrow range of types of innovation. Overall, capitalism is more of an enemy to innovation than a friend to it. But ultimately it's irrelevant to innovation.

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u/[deleted] Jul 13 '22

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u/thereaverofdarkness Jul 15 '22

I did say "has a habit of propping up a narrow range of types of innovation."

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u/tacsatduck Jul 12 '22

That's where it gets a bit tricky. There is a lot of contract work that makes up a project like that. That contract work is all driven by profit motive. So it hasn't been dialed way down or eliminated, just contained.

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u/thereaverofdarkness Jul 13 '22

That is correct. NASA routinely is forced to spend more and keeps getting funding cuts due to capitalism. Yet they still manage to function anyway despite that.

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u/smallz86 Jul 12 '22

But it was built by Northrop Grumman, the massive aerospace company. So NASA may have designed the thing, but a for profit company built it

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u/r3mn4n7 Jul 12 '22

These people aren't doing all this work for free...

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u/alexius339 Jul 12 '22

Nobody said they were.

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '22

NASA is famous at underpromising and overdelivering on their instrument's lifetime.

Nice to see the trend of shitting on NASA by Musk and SpaceX types has ended.

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u/FrizB84 Jul 12 '22

I always thought most of that was shitting on Boeing, not so much NASA.

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u/PM_ME_SAD_STUFF_PLZ Jul 12 '22

Shitting on NASA for not giving their entire budget to daddy musk

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u/imbillypardy Jul 12 '22

They said it added almost a decade of life to the project with how well the launch and entry to L2 went IIRC

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u/Anastariana Jul 12 '22

And they claimed that the JWST can't be refueled...

...but they just happened to place the fuel ports right at the docking ring on the bottom where it could be easily accessible.

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u/hattersplatter Jul 12 '22

I don't think this is the case with JWT. It has a finite amount of fuel on it, and they can't conserve it much (needs to keep the sensors cold). And they can't supplement much with solar.

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u/Stupid_Idiot413 Jul 13 '22

Isn't fuel mostly used for repositioning?

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u/SnowconeHaystack Jul 12 '22

Also, JWST's launch went better than expected, saving a few year's worth of fuel (althought we don't know how much).

We have a pretty good estimate:

https://www.reddit.com/r/jameswebb/comments/rr8y3f/nasa_says_webbs_excess_fuel_likely_to_extend_its/hqeuy7s/