Absolutely beautiful! One year after the Webb telescope was put into operation, these high-definition photos of the universe were taken!

Remember the tens of billions of dollars worth of Webb Space Telescope?

In July 2022, scientists announced the first color photos taken by Webb, thus opening the way for scientific observations using a new generation of space telescopes.

Now, a full year later, the Webb team has released a brand new photo to celebrate the completion of its first year of scientific operations .

Part of the Rho Ophiuchi Nebula Complex | NASA, ESA, CSA

This is a small star-forming region in the Rho Ophiuchi Nebula Complex , about 390 light-years from Earth, containing about 50 young stars of similar or smaller mass than our Sun.

The darkest areas in the image are where the material is densest, with thick shells of dust where protostars are still forming.

Visible at the upper right is a massive red bipolar jet of molecular hydrogen, a relativistic outflow of matter blasted into space by a young star as it first breaks free of its swaddling blanket of cosmic dust.

And in the lower half of the image, a star called S1, the only star in the image that is significantly more massive than our sun, has carved a bright hole in the dust with its light.

And this is just a tiny area of ​​the so-called "sky color disk" that is very familiar to astronomers near the Milky Way in summer.

Location of the Webb color image above in the night sky | NASA

Since releasing its first color images last July, Webb has lived up to its original promise, bringing us not only breathtaking infrared images of the universe but also clear spectra that are of real interest to scientists.

With its spectral analysis, Webb has confirmed the most distant galaxies ever seen, discovered the earliest and most distant supermassive black holes, identified the atmospheric composition of exoplanets in unprecedented detail, revealed the chemical composition of stellar nurseries and protoplanetary disks, detected water and organic compounds, and more.

Below, we have selected a number of beautiful images taken by the Webb Space Telescope, each of which shows us a side of the universe that has never been seen before.

The Universe, the Distant Dawn

Scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute created a three-dimensional visualization of about 5,000 galaxies based on data from the Webb telescope's CEERS survey.

Flying to the Maisie Galaxy | Frank Summers (STScI), Greg Bacon (STScI), Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Leah Hustak (STScI), Joseph Olmsted (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

In the video above, the camera's perspective moves back in time at a speed of 200 million light years per second , and finally settles on an ancient galaxy called Maisie, which existed about 13.4 billion years ago, just 390 million years after the Big Bang.

Some of the interesting galaxies captured by the CEERS survey | Phantom_D-J

The CEERS survey project, short for "Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey," aims to use the Webb telescope to cover an area of ​​100 square arc minutes. This area of ​​the sky is located near the northern handle of the Big Dipper, called the EGS area, where the Hubble telescope has conducted detailed observations and photographed more than 50,000 galaxies.

The Webb telescope has captured more galaxies than ever before, including the most distant active supermassive black hole confirmed so far. This black hole is located in the CEERS 1019 galaxy, has a mass of about 9 million times that of the sun, and existed in the early universe just 570 million years after the Big Bang.

The three bright spots crowded together in the center of the image are the galaxy CEERS 1019, home to the most distant active supermassive black hole ever confirmed | NASA, ESA, CSA, Steve Finkelstein (UT Austin), Micaela Bagley (UT Austin), Rebecca Larson (UT Austin).

Galaxies, a collision of all kinds

This is the irregular galaxy NGC 3256 , which is about the same size as the Milky Way. It is located in the southern constellation Vela, about 120 million light-years away from us, and is a member of the Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster.

Irregular galaxy NGC 3256 | ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus, A. Evans

NGC 3256 may look peaceful, with its tightly interwoven spiral arms entwined in a hazy cloud of starlight, but the galaxy pictured here is actually the result of an ancient cosmic collision. The warped galaxy is the remnant of a head-on collision between two spiral galaxies of equal mass, which astronomers estimate occurred about 500 million years ago.

Arp 220 | NASA, ESA, CSA, K. Pontoppidan (STScI), A. Pagan (STScI)

This is Arp 220, a pair of spiral galaxies merging in the constellation Ophiuchus, about 250 million light-years from Earth. It shines extremely brightly in the infrared band, with a brightness exceeding that of a trillion suns. In comparison, our Milky Way is much inferior, only as bright as a hundred billion suns.

The collision of the two spiral galaxies began about 700 million years ago, triggering a massive burst of star formation.

About 200 huge star clusters are crammed into a small, dust-filled region about 5,000 light-years wide, only 1/20 the diameter of the Milky Way, but the total amount of gas it contains is equivalent to the total amount of gas in the entire Milky Way.

IC 1623 | ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus & A. Evans

This is IC 1623, a pair of entangled galaxies located about 270 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cetus.

The two galaxies are in the process of merging, with one galaxy plunging headfirst into the other. The collision has ignited a frenzy of star formation, called a starburst, that is creating new stars at a rate 20 times faster than that of the Milky Way.

Nebulae, the birth and death of stars

Below is the famous Orion Nebula , or more precisely, a very small part of the Orion Nebula called the Orion Bar, which is essentially a wall of gas in the Orion Nebula (left).

Part of the Orion Nebula | ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), and the PDRs4All ERS Team

Webb detected an organic molecule in the protoplanetary disk of one of these young stars (lower right), called a methyl cation (CH3+), which plays an important role in the formation of more complex carbon-based molecules.

Carbon compounds are the building blocks of all known life. The Webb telescope is opening up new ways to the study of interstellar organic chemistry, an area of ​​great interest to many astronomers.

Cassiopeia A | NASA, ESA, CSA, D. Milisavljevic (Purdue University), T. Temim (Princeton University), I. De Looze (UGent), J. DePasquale (STScI)

This is Cassiopeia A , a supernova remnant about 10 light-years across and 11,000 light-years away, captured by the Webb telescope's mid-infrared instrument.

A supernova is an explosion when a massive star dies, often outshining an entire galaxy. The light from the supernova that left this remnant should have shone brightly in Earth's night sky in the 1690s. For a supernova in our galaxy, it would have easily been the brightest star in the night sky, easily visible even during the day.

But the strange thing is that such a supernova has never appeared in any record in ancient and modern times, both in China and abroad.

The current mainstream view is that this supernova had already ejected a large amount of matter before it exploded, and that matter blocked the light of the supernova itself, so it was not seen by people on Earth at the time.

The Webb telescope's observations of Cassiopeia A help answer the scientific question: Where does cosmic dust come from?

Chamaeleon I Molecular Cloud | NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

This is a particularly cold, dense and dark area in the Chamaeleon I molecular cloud 500 light-years away. The Webb telescope used multiple instruments to conduct in-depth spectral observations of it.

Webb's observations have revealed that dust grains in that star-forming region contain not only water ice, but also dry ice from carbon dioxide and ice from molecules such as carbonyl sulfide, ammonia and methane, which are important components of planetary atmospheres, as well as sugars, alcohols and simple amino acid molecules.

As stars and star systems formed, these dust grains would clump together in protoplanetary disks and form planets. This discovery is the first evidence that these complex molecules were formed deep in the icy layers of molecular clouds, long before planets or even stars were born.

In other words, pre-biotic molecules that are important for the formation of life are far more common in the universe than stars and planets.

Dark Nebula L1527 | NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

This image of a protostar in the dark nebula L1527 is located in the star-forming region of the constellation Taurus. These hot clouds are only visible in infrared wavelengths, and the details captured in this image by the Webb telescope's near-infrared camera are helping us understand how a newborn star begins its life.

The protostar itself is hidden in the neck of this hourglass. If you look closely, you can see a dark line in the middle of the neck, which is the protoplanetary disk around the protostar, facing us edge-on. The light from the protostar shines through the disk above and below, illuminating the holes in the surrounding gas and dust.

This protostar is a Class 0 protostar, in the earliest stages of star formation, still enveloped in a dark cloud of dust and gas, and has a long way to go before it can become a mature star.

The view from L1527 provides a window into the early days of our Sun and solar system.

Tarantula Nebula | NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team

This is 30 Doradus , nicknamed the Tarantula Nebula because of its resemblance to a tarantula in previous photos. It is a popular region for astronomers studying star formation.

The Tarantula Nebula is about 161,000 light-years away from Earth. It is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. It is the largest and brightest star-forming region in the Local Group of galaxies.

In this image from the Webb telescope, the entire region looks like a wolf spider's nest, woven with its own silk. The Tarantula Nebula harbors thousands of stars that are either newly formed or still forming, many of which are being discovered for the first time by Webb.

Eagle Nebula's Pillars of Creation | NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; J. DePasquale, A. Koekemoer, A. Pagan (STScI)

The Pillars of Creation, 6,500 light-years from Earth, are located in the center of the Eagle Nebula M16. The three giant pillars look like majestic rock formations, but are actually made of cooling interstellar gas and dust, which appear somewhat translucent in the near-infrared band. New stars are forming in the dense cloud of gas and dust.

The Hubble Telescope became famous for its stunning photos of the Pillars of Creation. The Webb Telescope released an infrared image of the same target, which can be said to be a direct confrontation.

The Pillars of Creation as imaged by the mid-infrared instrument | NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. DePasquale (STScI), A. Pagan (STScI)

Webb also observed the same target using a mid-infrared instrument that is extremely sensitive to detecting dust, a major component of star-forming regions.

Unlike near-infrared images, thousands of stars in this area of ​​the sky disappear from view, and endless gas and dust seem to become the visual center of the picture.

Many stars are actively forming in these dense blue-grey dust pillars. When these regions form knots of gas and dust of sufficient mass, they begin to collapse under their own gravity, slowly heating up and eventually forming new stars.

Different planets in the solar system

Webb also made near-infrared observations of the solar system's planets , which appear differently than before at these wavelengths.

Webb's view of the solar system planets: Jupiter (upper left), Saturn (upper right), Uranus (lower left), and Neptune (lower right) and their rings | NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Take Saturn, for example. In near-infrared light, Saturn itself appears very dark because its methane gas absorbs almost all of the sunlight. But Saturn's icy rings are relatively bright.

Similarly, the Webb telescope has captured the multiple rings of Uranus and Neptune clearly. Before this, such details could only be seen by the Voyager probes that flew by at close range.

Jupiter as seen by Webb | NASA, ESA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt

The images of Jupiter taken by the Webb telescope using a near-infrared camera show the auroras appearing above the north and south poles of Jupiter (shown in red in the image above), as well as the fog around the poles (shown in yellow-green).

The familiar Great Red Spot on Jupiter appears white in this image taken by Webb because it reflects a lot of sunlight.

Neptune "suspended" in the sea of ​​stars | NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Thanks to its powerful light-gathering capability, the Webb telescope not only observed Neptune, but also photographed countless galaxies farther away behind it. Neptune with its rings quietly "floating" in the sea of ​​stars, a dreamlike scene that vividly demonstrates the Webb telescope's ability to not only penetrate the deepest dawn of the distant universe, but also reveal the clearest details of the solar system objects "right before our eyes."

The Webb telescope has exceeded expectations in its first year, and plans for its second year of observation have been set to build on that success. For this billion-dollar space telescope, Webb's scientific mission to explore the universe has just begun.

Planning and production

Source: Guokr

Author: Steed, star photographer and astronomy science creator

Editor: Cui Yinghao

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