Cosmological history can be divided into pre-telescope and post-telescope. It can be said that a new era in astronomy begins when Galileo Galilei, a scientist, observes the sky with a telescope four centuries ago. Until then, only observations and conclusions based on the limitations of the naked eye were possible. Galileo, who saw the moons of Jupiter and the eclipses of Venus through a telescope, gave great clues to the vastness of the universe. A small telescope helped him! The telescope has always been a guide to man’s quest for the vastness of the universe.
Along with the growth of that discipline, the telescope has also undergone morphological and technological evolutions. The concept of simply observing distant spherical objects in the wavelengths of visible light has changed. Telescopes are currently operating in space that enable observation of the universe in infrared, X-ray, and ultraviolet wavelengths that cannot be seen by humans. We know about the Hubble telescope, which has been orbiting the sky for three decades; The knowledge given to the scientific world by the images taken by Hubble is evolving just like this universe. The James Webb Telescope is a space telescope that can be described as the successor of Hubble. This telescope has created history with the very first images taken. The world of science believes that the James Webb Telescope will be able to develop cosmology to new levels.
The James Webb Telescope, which observes cosmic objects at infrared wavelengths, was launched on December 25. In the late ’90s, this was a project developed by the American space research agency, NASA. Dubbed the ‘Next Generation Telescope’, the project was delayed for several reasons; In 2002, the telescope was named after James Webb, former director of NASA. Later, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency became part of James Webb. It was announced that it would be launched in 2016, but due to technical reasons, we had to wait another five years. Yesterday, NASA released five images taken by the telescope located in the L2 orbit, 15 lakh kilometers from Earth.
They can show that they are infallible in the project, and the ‘release’ was carried out by US President Joe Biden. However, many of the images contained very important information about astronauts; In a sense, all this time inaccessible to the scientific world! James Webb’s first image was of the galaxy cluster ‘SMACS J 0723’ in the constellation Volans in the Southern Hemisphere. This galactic community, bound together by gravity, is already within the orbit of the scientific world. This galaxy cluster was studied to find out how the formation of galaxies happened after the origin of the universe. This film is a major breakthrough in that quest. The cluster is 512 million light-years away from Earth. In other words, the telescope captures the light waves emitted during the galaxy formation period, after the birth of the universe. In other words, we are seeing some glimpses of Genesis through those pictures. In this way, we can expect to gain new knowledge about the Big Bang.
Other images captured by James Webb are of the Carina Nebula and the Stephen’s Quintet, a group of five galaxies. These images are enough to shed light on cosmic evolution. James Webb also sent a picture of an extraterrestrial planet (Wasp 96b) 1100 light-years from Earth. All of these images offer great potential in spectroscopy. It should be assumed that the spectroscopy of these images will provide clear indications regarding the structure of all the above-mentioned cosmic objects and the substances contained in them. Already, it is concluded that WASP 96b has the presence of water particles. It is also a reference to biological presence in the extraterrestrial world.
One of the most important areas of James Webb’s research is extraterrestrial life. In short, the birth and death of stars and the evolution of galaxies in this ever-expanding universe are captured in a single frame with a device measuring only 25 square meters. Expect more miracles from James Webb.
