Dec 21, 2023 23:00:00

Top 15 dramatic images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope in 2023, including the most distant black hole and supernova remnant 'Crab Nebula'

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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope , an ultra-high-performance space telescope launched by NASA in 2021, will complete various adjustments and begin full-scale operation in July 2022, and 2023 will be the first time it has operated for a full year. It's the year of the year. The science media Big Think is introducing ``Top 15 Dramatic Images Taken by the James Webb Space Telescope in 2023''.

The top 15 JWST images of 2023 - Big Think
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/top-jwst-images-2023/

◆1: The most distant black hole ever observed
By combining infrared images from the James Webb Space Telescope with X-ray data from Chandra , researchers have discovered the existence of a black hole behind the Pandora galaxy cluster (Abell 2744) , located 13.2 billion light years away , the farthest ever observed. revealed. The mass of the black hole is approximately the same as that of the galaxy containing the black hole, UHZ1 , and approximately 10 to 100 million times the mass of the sun.

◆2: Supernova remnant “Crab Nebula”

A supernova remnant is a structure that remains after a star explodes into a supernova, and the Crab Nebula in the constellation Taurus is the remains of a supernova explosion that occurred in the Milky Way Galaxy in 1054 AD. The James Webb Space Telescope has captured images of the wind and magnetic characteristics of the central Crab pulsar , which emits X-rays and visible light.

◆3: Viewer including the most distant galaxies
As part of

the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) , which investigates galaxies in the early universe, a zoomable viewer that includes a huge number of celestial objects has been released . Although the viewer covers a relatively small area, it includes the most distant galaxies discovered so far, as well as candidate galaxies that have the potential to be even further away.

◆4: Inside the Orion Nebula

The Orion Nebula in the Milky Way Galaxy is the closest massive star-forming region to Earth. If you take pictures of the interior of the Orion Nebula with the James Webb Space Telescope, you can see newborn stars that are still in the process of forming.

◆5: Farthest gravitational lens ever
The image below shows how the gravity of a small, heavy galaxy located approximately 17 billion light years away distorts the light of a galaxy 21 billion light years away into a ring shape. When there is a heavy celestial body between a star and the Earth, a phenomenon called `` gravitational lensing '' occurs, which causes the light of distant stars to appear bent. The newly discovered galaxy is a small, heavy object that causes gravitational lensing, and it is said to be the farthest object that causes gravitational lensing.

◆6: Massive galaxy cluster “Elgordo” with a mass of more than 2,000 trillion suns
The

Elgordo Galaxy Cluster, which is said to be the most massive galaxy cluster in which many galaxies are grouped together under the influence of gravity, is estimated to have a mass approximately 2.1 trillion times that of the Sun. Looking at images of the Elgordo galaxy cluster taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, we can see that the light in 'A' and 'B' is stretched or ring-shaped by the gravity of the galaxy in the foreground. Masu.

◆7: The most distant red supergiant star ever
In the same region as Elgordo, Quyllur, the most distant

red supergiant star with a diameter more than several hundred times that of the Sun and more than several thousand times brighter, was also photographed. Quyllur is the first red supergiant star photographed more than 1 billion light years from Earth.

◆8: Triple lens “H0pe supernova”
Light emitted by distant celestial bodies can be divided into multiple images by gravitational lenses, but the ``

H0pe supernova '' photographed by the James Webb Space Telescope is unique in that it is divided into three images. By observing how the brightness of each of the three images of the H0pe supernova changes, it may be possible to accurately calculate the strength of the gravitational lens and calculate the Hubble constant with high precision.

◆9: Inside a spiral galaxy
Many images of

spiral galaxies consist of bright, shining stars and grains of dust blocking the light. In images of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 7496 taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, approximately 60 star clusters within NGC 7496 have been newly identified .

◆10: Ring Nebula

The Ring Nebula , located in the constellation Lyra, is one of the most famous planetary nebulae. The James Webb Space Telescope used NIRCam (near-infrared camera) and MIRI (mid-infrared observation instrument) to reveal further details of the Ring Nebula using light at different wavelengths.

◆11: Saturn's rings
Saturn itself is a relatively cool star and appears dark in the infrared light of the James Webb Space Telescope, but the rings around Saturn are made of 99.9% ice and have a higher reflectance of infrared light than the planet itself. It looks bright. Saturn's rings are named 'A ring', 'B ring', etc. along several widths, and in the image below, the A ring, B ring, C ring, and F ring can be clearly identified. .

◆12: Rings of Uranus
The James Webb Space Telescope has also released beautiful images of Uranus' rings. You can understand why the rings of Uranus are facing us by reading the article below.

NASA releases new image of the beautifully shining ``Rings of Uranus'' taken with the James Webb Space Telescope - GIGAZINE

◆13: Sparkler Galaxy
In 2023, it was revealed that an image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope in 2022 has a feature called a ' Sparkler galaxy .' The sparkler-like light surrounded by a yellow frame in the image below is the light from stars forming in a distant globular cluster that is stretched out by the gravitational lens in the foreground. It is known that there are known star clusters inside these globular clusters, suggesting that 'secondary star formation' is occurring inside them.

◆14: Fomalhaut star system
When we observed the star

Fomalhaut in the southern constellation of Pisces with the James Webb Space Telescope, we found that there is an asteroid belt or Kuiper belt -like region in a different location from the solar system. This suggests that the solar system, which has been thought to be a standard star system, may not actually be that way.

◆15: The most distant galaxy cluster ever observed
Observations using the James Webb Space Telescope have confirmed that the primordial galaxy cluster A2744z7p9OD is the most distant galaxy cluster in history, located 13.14 billion light years away.