New York, Europe Brief News – NASA ‘s James Webb Space Telescope released an image of a galaxy cluster revealing the most detailed glimpse of the early universe ever seen.
The White House sneak peek of Webb’s first high-resolution, full-color image came on the eve of a larger unveiling of photos and spectrographic data that NASA plans to showcase on Tuesday at the Goddard Space Flight Center in suburban Maryland.
The $9 billion Webb observatory, the largest and most powerful space science telescope ever launched, was designed to peer through the cosmos to the dawn of the known universe, ushering in a revolutionary era of astronomical discovery.
The image is said to be the deepest, most detailed infrared view of the Universe to date, containing the light from galaxies that has taken many billions of years to reach us.
US President Joe Biden was shown the image during a White House briefing.
Further debut pictures from James Webb are due to be released by Nasa in a global presentation on Tuesday.
“These images are going to remind the world that America can do big things, and remind the American people – especially our children – that there’s nothing beyond our capacity,” President Biden remarked.
It will make all sorts of observations of the sky, but has two overarching goals. One is to take pictures of the very first stars to shine in the Universe more than 13.5 billion years ago; the other is to probe far-off planets to see if they might be habitable.
