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National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has released test image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope ahead of the July 12 release of the first science-quality images.
Webb's Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS), developed by the Canadian Space Agency recently captured a view of stars and galaxies that provides a tantalizing glimpse at what the telescope's science instruments will reveal in the coming weeks, months, and years.
Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
The result using 72 exposures over 32 hours is among the deepest images of the universe ever taken, according to Webb scientists.
NASA says that the engineering test image – produced during a thermal stability test in mid-May.
In this image, the FGS image was acquired in parallel with NIRCam imaging of the star HD147980 over a period of 8 days at the beginning of May.
It represents 32 hours of exposure time at several overlapping pointings of the Guider 2 channel.
The observations were not optimized for detection of faint objects, but nevertheless the image captures extremely faint objects and is, for now, the deepest image of the infrared sky, NASA said.
It said that the unfiltered wavelength response of the guider, from 0.6 to 5 micrometers, helps provide this extreme sensitivity.
According to NASA, the image is mono-chromatic and is displayed in false color with white-yellow-orange-red representing the progression from brightest to dimmest.
NASA explains that the bright star (at 9.3 magnitude) on the right hand edge is 2MASS 16235798+2826079.
“There are only a handful of stars in this image – distinguished by their diffraction spikes. The rest of the objects are thousands of faint galaxies, some in the nearby universe, but many, many more in the high redshift universe," it said.
“With the Webb telescope achieving better-than-expected image quality, early in commissioning we intentionally defocused the guiders by a small amount to help ensure they met their performance requirements," Neil Rowlands, program scientist for Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor, at Honeywell Aerospace
"When this image was taken, I was thrilled to clearly see all the detailed structure in these faint galaxies. Given what we now know is possible with deep broad-band guider images, perhaps such images, taken in parallel with other observations where feasible, could prove scientifically useful in the future," he said.