Tuesday, July 12, 2022 – 10:03 am
WASHINGTON, July 12, 2019 (WAM) — The US space agency “NASA” yesterday showed the first full-color image from the James Webb Space Telescope, an image of a cluster of galaxies. The early universe.
The image is the deepest and clearest infrared image of the distant universe to date, according to NASA.
The image showed a 4.6-billion-year-old galaxy called SMEX 0723 whose collective mass acts as a “gravitational lens,” distorting space to greatly amplify the light of distant galaxies.
US President Joe Biden said at a ceremony at the White House that the space telescope’s first harvest was presented, and that this scientific and color image, captured in infrared light, marked a first and historic day of its kind. .
One of the oldest dim light mirrors visible in the “background” of the image is more than 13 billion years old, making it about 800 million years younger than the Big Bang, the theoretical spark that started the expansion of the known universe. Before the universe, said NASA President Bill Nelson, was about 13.8 billion years old.
NASA plans to release the telescope’s first remaining full-color images on Tuesday.
The James Webb Telescope was launched on December 25 aboard an Ariane rocket from the European Space Agency’s Kourou spacecraft in French Guiana.
The Webb Telescope took about 30 years to develop and cost about $10 billion, and is the successor to the Hubble Telescope, which has been in use for more than 30 years.
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Wm/ Dina Omar
