Webb telescope spies a celestial sparkler among the universe's earliest galaxies The image of SMACS 0723 is "the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date," according to NASA. President Joe Biden released one of Webb's first images on Monday July 11. These small galaxies, which appear to be very close together, aren’t actually interacting with one another, but they allow researchers to trace and compare galactic dust. Scientists selected the galactic pair from nearly 2,000 candidates identified by Galaxy Zoo citizen science volunteers. The study has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal. The image is an early result from the observation program called the Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science, or PEARLS, through the Webb Telescope, which has not yet been through the peer-review process. … Webb’s near-infrared data also show us the galaxy’s longer, extremely dusty spiral arms in far more detail, giving the arms an appearance of overlapping with the central bulge of the bright white elliptical galaxy on the left.” “Webb’s new data allowed us to trace the light that was emitted by the bright white elliptical galaxy, at left, through the winding spiral galaxy at right - and identify the effects of interstellar dust in the spiral galaxy. Webb, Hubble space telescopes share images of DART slamming into an asteroid NIRCam was built by a team at the University of Arizona and Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center. The observations shown here were conducted in the filter F070W (0.7 microns) and assigned the color red. Spectroscopic data will also provide researchers with insight into the asteroid's chemical composition.
In the coming months, scientists will use Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) to observe Dimorphos further.
These observations, when combined with data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, will allow scientists to gain knowledge about the nature of the surface of Dimorphos, how much material was ejected by the collision, and how fast it was ejected. Those sharp points are Webb's distinctive eight diffraction spikes, an artifact of the telescope's structure. A tight, compact core and plumes of material appearing as wisps streaming away from the center of where the impact took place, are visible in the image. This image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument shows Dimorphos, the asteroid moonlet in the double-asteroid system of Didymos, about 4 hours after NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) made impact.
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