By Devin McCue, Sumner Newscow — Happy Friday. It’s hot out.

Even in parts of the country that are generally cooler, it’s getting all but impossible to escape the heat. And this is just the start; last year was the hottest summer in U.S. history and this year could even surpass that.

So, while climate change (not so) slowly turns the planet into a ball of soup, let’s turn our attention to other planets. And let’s not stop there, thanks to the groundbreaking pictures from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), we can see parts of the universe we’ve only theorized about.

In addition to that, the telescope photographed the oldest light ever seen. That means we can now literally see back in time, but more on that in a second.

NASA releases a steady stream of pictures from the telescope, that you can view on their website, and the scientific community is buzzing. They’ve pointed the telescope at a few key areas of interest (including back at ourselves), and while these early images are “glamour shots” for the most part, we can still draw a ton of scientific information from them.

For the sake of simplicity, however, we’ll only look at the first five images the telescope sent back to Earth. Each is brilliant in its own way and NASA chose them to showcase the breadth of what this telescope will accomplish over its career.

[You can find higher resolution versions of all these at this link]

SMACS 0723

As you can tell from the title of this glorious picture, space nerds are terrible at naming things. Back when we were still discovering planets in our own solar system, we could afford to give all of them cool names like Jupiter and Neptune, but now that we can see literally billions of stars and planets, we’ve had to resort to using names like “SMACS.”

But SMACS is more than just an ugly name and a pretty face.

This picture is the sharpest infrared image of deep space that’s ever been taken. That means the light captured in this photo won’t even have a chance to reach Earth for another 4.6 billion years. The reason it was taken in infrared is more than just for aesthetics too. It makes every image sharper with more measurable information than ever before. Scientists can use these images not only to see further galaxies than ever but also to deduce what those galaxies are made of.

And this image also shattered a long-standing astronomical record (one of many).

Within this picture, there is an extremely small red blob named GN-z11. GN-z11 is the oldest galaxy ever seen at a staggering 13.4 billion years old. Not only does that blow away the previous record by 100 million years, but that’s also within 400 million years of the big bang. And the craziest part of GN-z11 is that we saw it after only 12.5 hours of looking at it.

The Hubble Telescope’s famous deep field images took weeks to photograph. The telescopes work by absorbing faint light signatures and amplifying/quantifying them, therefore the longer the exposure, the better the picture. JWST only looked at its deep field for a little over half a day. Imagine what we’ll see after pointing it at the big bang for a week.

Stephan’s Quintet

While SMACS is the headliner of this release, there’s a strong set of supporting cast (including the prettiest, which I’m saving for last).

Stephan’s Quartet is the counterbalance to SMACS with respect to scale. NASA described the slice of space pictured in SMACS as the size of a grain of rice if held out at arm’s length. This picture takes up roughly the diameter of the moon.

The JWST is nothing if not versatile.

The picture also tells us a lot about space history, but this time by looking at a galaxy system we already knew a lot about in a new light. This group of five galaxies is well known and even had a part in the black and white film It’s a Wonderful Life. Thanks to the telescope, though, we can see the inner mechanics of the intertwined galaxies and what they tell us about the immense physics that shaped the early universe.

Instead of guessing at the number of collisions, births, deaths, and storms the stars were engaged within this cluster, we can see exactly what’s going on. There’s a clear view of a star being born as well as a previously unseen galaxy breaking through one of the tails. Perhaps the biggest impact of the great show is the gas distribution (and the effect that may have on how atmospheres form) among baby solar systems.

Among the astronomers (nerds) at NASA, Stephan’s Quintet is known as “the laboratory” of space.

Southern Ring Nebula

The Southern Ring Nebula is the final performance of two heavy-weight stars going down in flames together.

There are two stars in the late stages of life at the center of this nebula and as they rotate each other and emit new gases (filled with different elements and chemical compounds), the galaxy around them takes new shape.

NASA describes viewing this process as watching a movie in extreme slow-motion. The picture on the left is the same as its partner, except at an earlier stage of death when the gas around it made it appear as one star. We always knew there were two stars there, but only because of the math created by their gravitational pulls.

Now we can see it, and it’s beautiful.

Like before, we will learn more about the death of stars and end-stages of galaxies, but now we’ll see it without all the background “noise” of Stephan’s Quintet. The gases and projectiles emitting from the Southern Ring will go far beyond their homes and enrich other parts of the universe.

Every element on our planet and in our bodies once came from dying stars like this and now we’ll know how they got here.

WASP-96 b

While WASP-96 b sounds like John Mayer cover band, it’s actually JWST’s first stab at exoplanet research. This picture is clearly the ugly duckling of the group, but like all ugly siblings, it makes up for it in personality.

Exoplanet research is one of the key reasons NASA and other space agencies even exist. We’re clearly going to set our own planet on fire, so let’s try and find a backup planet to fly our descendants to in a couple of hundred years.

And that’s just what WASP is, an exoplanet about 1,100 lightyears away in the Milky Way orbiting a Sun-like star. The graph pictured here is actually rock-solid proof that this planet has water, clouds, and a water vapor haze. Scientists determined a long time ago that the life we would be able to recognize needs at least one thing to form: liquid water.

So, studying planets like WASP that we know have water is a key step to finding life outside our own stellar borders. WASP may have water, but it differs from Earth in a few key ways: it’s a gas giant larger than Jupiter and so close to its “Sun” that the atmosphere is over 1000°F and rotates around the star every 3.5 Earth days.

We’ve guessed WASP had water a while back (shout out to Hubble), but the level of detail captured by JWST is unprecedented. Exoplanet research will go far beyond WASP and a quarter of the first cycle schedule of the telescope’s life is dedicated to just that purpose.

Carina Nebula

Now, for the star of the show.

The Carina Nebula is one of the most beautiful locations in the universe that we know about and for that reason earned the nickname: Cosmic Cliffs.

We always knew the Carina Nebula was That Girl, but the James Webb Space Telescope made her the pride of the universe. You need only look at Hubble’s picture of the same area to see the difference between the two telescopes’ capabilities.

The peaks and cliffs in the image that give the area its name are actually the edges of a massive cavern in the NGC 3324 constellation where we can peak through to the space beyond. That’s also why there are stars that seem to decorate the mountainsides.

The scientific advantages of this view will be the observations of how new stars interact with each other as well as their older, wiser star neighbors.

But, if we’re being honest, the significance of this photo is the inspiration it provides. Scientists will marvel at the complexity, amateur space nerds like me will write articles, and (most importantly) kids will be inspired to take up astronomy.

Many of the astronomers who helped create the James Webb Space Telescope were inspired to pursue the field because of the incredible pictures taken by Hubble. And now they’ve helped galvanize the next generation of interstellar explorers. Maybe one of them will unlock a new discovery that causes another kid to look up and wonder…

Meme of the week

I, unfortunately, can’t look at every meme that dominates the internet every week, so if you see a meme and think it should be the meme of the week please send it to: SumnerCultureCow@gmail.com

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