Joe Biden celebrates James Webb telescope photo: “This is a historic moment for humanity”

James Webb’s first picture of the telescopeThe largest ever launched into space, the President of the United States participated in this Monday’s event at the White House. Joe Biden celebrated the milestone: “The first image from the Webb Space Telescope marks a historic moment for science and technology. For astronomy and space exploration. For America and all mankind.”

The photo shows “A grain of sand on the tip of a finger, holding the hand”According to an analogy made by NASA director Bill Nelson, he referred to space in which the photograph was taken. “A Small Piece of the Universe”.

A place will appear in the image SMACS 0723Large star clusters work like magnifying glasses due to their enormous gravitational pull, amplifying the light of past galaxies.

It is one of the most studied places with telescopes HubbleA photo created today has a resolution and level of detail Never seen before Because of the complexity of the web, it will serve, among other things, to replace Hubble.

“These films will show the world that nothing is beyond the capabilities of Americans”, Biden said during his speech before presenting the photo.

James Webb is operated jointly by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

Today’s event helped provide a model As the space agencies launch one by one, everything will unfold from tomorrow onwards. First images for scientific use of the telescope.

So far, the telescope has only targeted star clusters in well-studied locations —Like the Large Magellanic Cloud– In order to test the calibration of your instruments.

“We are looking at over 13 billion years”, Nelson explained, that the Webb telescope will allow scientists to study the light from the first stars to form in the universe.

“In addition – he added-, it will be possible to see if there are habitable planets, Thanks to the telescope we can determine the chemical composition of its atmosphere.”

In addition to the image released today, space agencies are expected to release photos The Southern Ring Nebula, Carina’s Nebula or Stephen’s Quintet are among the popular cosmic targets among astronomers.

Because of its extreme sensitivity, James Webb could observe the light of galaxies only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. This will allow us to get an idea of ​​the creation of our universe.

Since the telescope was able to unravel its massive hexagonal mirror earlier this year, the sophisticated systems, cameras, spectrographs and coronagraphs have all performed above scientists’ expectations.

however, In May it suffered a minor impact from a micro-meteorite larger than engineers They expected him to deal with his position in space.

However, experts pointed out that it continues to operate at a level that “exceeds mission requirements, despite some detectable effect on the data.”

(with information from EFE)

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