Together, this makes eight visible diffraction spikes surrounding the brightest stars in JWST images, giving them an almost spiderlike appearance. And four overlap with the spikes caused by the primary mirror shape. The struts that hold the small mirror away from the primary mirror add six more diffraction spikes: Two visibly radiate horizontally from the center of a bright object. The primary mirror shape creates a six-pointed diffraction pattern for sufficiently bright sources: each “spike” in this pattern stretches toward one of the points of a hexagon.
In turn, the secondary mirror sends the light to detectors inside the telescope to make an image or collect other data. The primary mirror reflects infrared light-which humans can’t see but can feel as warmth radiating from a light source-onto a smaller secondary mirror. Eighteen individual hexagonal mirrors make up JWST’s large segmented primary mirror, forming a giant honeycomb-shaped aperture. The shape of the mirrors and struts on a telescope can change the appearance of bright objects, such as the red-tinged star seen close to the center in the image at left. When that image is released, she anticipates many “oldest galaxy” records will be smashed thanks to the telescope’s ability to see deeper into the cosmos than Hubble ever could. The observatory’s first true deep-field image, Smethurst says, will likely be released in January or February 2023, after the telescope’s scheduled survey of the same section of sky where the Hubble Space Telescope captured its Ultra Deep Field image. “It’s not a deep field,” she says, because the image’s target was not empty sky but rather SMACS 0723, a galaxy cluster more than four billion light-years away. Although this picture is described as a deep-field image, this is actually a misnomer, says Becky Smethurst, an astrophysics researcher at the University of Oxford. The first image released from JWST is colloquially referred to as the observatory’s first “deep field,” referring to a technique where astronomers target seemingly barren regions of sky for long telescopic stares to reveal hidden faint objects. “This is just the beginning.” JWST’s Deepest Field-So Far The first image released from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) focuses on SMACS 0723, a cluster of galaxies more than four billion light-years away.
Some findings will confirm what we already suspect while other discoveries may be paradigm-shifting. As scientists begin to drink from the JWST firehose, she anticipates a plethora of interesting new information to be discovered about our universe. We’re going to get every day with Webb,” Mullally says. These first gorgeous images and data are just a small piece of what the team running JWST hopes will come out of the mission. “It’s through a collective knowledge that we reach our understanding of our place in the universe.” “Science is a very open process,” Mullally says. That’s the wonderful thing about NASA projects: the data are open-access.
“Anybody can actually go and explore the universe we’re not keeping any secrets here,” says Susan Mullally, deputy project scientist for JWST at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. Eventually, all of its measurements will be available for anyone to use. The data from this telescope have already started going public. There will be a lot to learn from JWST during its mission, from how galaxies evolve to the composition of exoplanet atmospheres. This was thanks in large part to the careful construction of the telescope. The first images released from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) revealed new views of the cosmos in exquisite, never-before-seen detail.