Webb's First Deep Field facts for kids
The Webb's First Deep Field is the very first amazing picture taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. It shows a group of galaxies called SMACS 0723. This galaxy cluster is super far away, about 4.6 billion light-years from Earth! A light-year is how far light travels in one year. This cluster is in a part of the sky called Volans.
This special picture was shown to everyone on July 11, 2022. The telescope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) took the photo. It covers a tiny bit of sky that you can see from the southern part of Earth. You can see thousands of galaxies in this picture. It's the clearest picture ever taken of the early universe, which means the universe when it was much younger.
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What is the James Webb Space Telescope?
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a powerful telescope that studies space using infrared astronomy. This means it looks at light that we can't see with our eyes, like heat. The Webb's First Deep Field picture was made by combining many images taken at different infrared "colors" of light. It took about 12.5 hours to collect all the light for this amazing photo.
The Webb telescope can see much deeper into space than the Hubble Space Telescope could, and it does it much faster! The Webb telescope has been orbiting Earth's second Lagrange point (L2) since January 24, 2022. This spot is about 1.5 million kilometers (about 930,000 miles) away from Earth. At L2, the pull of gravity from both the Sun and Earth helps the telescope stay in line with Earth as it goes around the Sun.
The galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is in a part of the sky that can be seen from the southern half of Earth. Scientists have looked at this cluster many times with Hubble and other telescopes to learn about the universe's past.
What did scientists learn from the image?
The image of SMACS 0723 shows us what the galaxy cluster looked like 4.6 billion years ago. Imagine holding a tiny grain of sand at arm's length. The part of the sky that Webb's image covers is about that small!
Many of the galaxies in the picture look redder than they should. This is called redshift. It happens because the universe is always getting bigger, stretching out the light from faraway objects.
The huge amount of stuff in the galaxy cluster acts like a giant magnifying glass. This is called a gravitational lens. It makes galaxies that are even farther away, behind the cluster, look bigger and brighter. Webb's NIRCam helped scientists see tiny, faint details in these distant galaxies that no one had ever seen before. This includes groups of stars and blurry shapes.
Why is this image important?
Webb's First Deep Field is the first full-color image from the JWST. It is also the clearest infrared picture of the universe ever taken. The image shows thousands of galaxies in a tiny piece of the universe. Webb's sharp view helps us see faint details in extremely distant galaxies. This gives us the most detailed look at the early universe we've ever had. Many of these galaxies, including some of the dimmest objects ever seen in infrared light, appeared in Webb's view for the first time.
The image was first shown to the public by U.S. President Joe Biden at a White House event on July 11, 2022.
See also
- List of deep fields
