The James-Webb space telescope turned its gaze to an iconic sky of the sky already explored over 20 years ago by Hubble. However, no feeling of already seen for astronomers. On the contrary, the image reveals a host of magnificent and precious details.
For several months, over 20 years ago now, the Hubble space telescope collected data on a region of the South Hemisphere Celeste. The high image resolutionresolution who resulted went around the world. The iconic ultra-profinity field of HubbleHubble (or hudf for English Hubble Ultra Deep Field) which shows almost 10,000 galaxies of different ages, shapes and colors. Of which the most distant existed when the universe had no more than 800 million years!
The James-Webb telescope revisits a mythical region of the sky
Today, it is a new image of this same region of the sky that the ESA publishes, theEuropean Space AgencyEuropean Space Agency. An image reconstituted from the data returned by two instruments of the James-Webb space telescope (JwstJwst), this time. With the three shortlift filters of the instrument MiriMiri – which operates in the average infrared – and with the Near infrared cameraNear infrared camera from JWST – NIRCAM.
In the image, different colors are attributed to the different types of captured infrared radiation. Orange and red for the largest wavelengths of the average infrared. The galaxies represented in these colors show additional characteristics, such as a high concentration of dust, abundant stellar formation or an active galactic nucleus in their center. The latter emit more of this type of lightlight infrared.
The small greenish white galaxies are particularly distant, with a Red offsetRed offset pupil. It moves their spectrespectre Bright to the maximum wavelengths of the average infrared. Most galaxies in this image are devoid of such amplification characteristics in the average infrared, which makes them brighter in the shorter wavelengths of the near infrared, represented in blue and cyan.
Precious details on an iconic image
To eyeseyes of the astronomersastronomersthis new iconic image reveals precious details. Galaxies hitherto hidden. Over 2,500 sources in a tiny portion of sky. Among them hundreds of extremely red galaxies, some of which are probably massive systems, obscured by dust, or advanced galaxies, including the starsstars mature were formed early in the history of our universe. Thanks to the high resolution of webb, even in the average infrared, researchers can decipher the structure of number of these galaxies and study the distribution of their light, thus illuminating their growth and their evolution.
