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Today marks one year since the launch of the James Webb Telescope. The astronomer made impressive images during his flight. Several discoveries were also made. NU.nl highlights six.
Wat is de James Webb-telescoop?
- De James Webb is gemaakt door de Verenigde Staten, Europa en Canada en werd vorig jaar op Eerste Kerstdag gelanceerd.
- De telescoop is de opvolger van ruimtetelescoop Hubble. De James Webb kan verder kijken en sneller beelden vastleggen.
- Eind januari kwam de telescoop aan op zo’n 1,5 miljoen kilometer van de aarde.
- Daar maakt de telescoop haarscherpe foto’s van het heelal. De telescoop is op zoek naar planeten waar misschien leven mogelijk is, verre sterrenstelsels en sporen van de oerknal.
The first images from the telescope were released in February. They were still vague, after which the quality was improved. The first razor-sharp images were released in July.
Including an image of the Carina Nebula. It contains a kind of nursery of the universe, where new stars arise.
The James Webb Telescope imaged thousands of previously unknown stars in September. The celestial bodies were seen in the Tarantula Nebula, located about 170,000 light-years from Earth.
Images include auroras, moons and planet rings. NASA has slightly edited the images to better bring out the detail.
The ‘Pillars of Creation’ have never been grasped so clearly. It is a starry nebula in which many new stars are born.
The columns are world famous and are among the most photographed starry nebulae. Astronomers can now compare images from the James Webb Telescope with all previous images.
In November, another beautiful image of the universe was released. The image shows an hourglass of orange and blue substances being released by a newly formed star in the center.
The colored clouds are only visible in infrared light and have never been seen before. The James Webb Telescope has now made this possible with its infrared camera.
New discoveries have also been made with the telescope, such as chemical reactions in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. This planet is called WASP-39b and was discovered in 2011 thanks to the WASP project. This is a search program to find planets around other stars.
The exoplanet is a gas giant the weight of Saturn and the size of Jupiter. Due to the short distance to its star, it is extremely hot on the planet. The temperature in the atmosphere exceeds 900 degrees.
The astronomer also captured clouds in the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, for the first time. Computer models had previously predicted that clouds might exist in Saturn’s moon atmosphere, but they had never been observed.
The largest cloud was over Titan’s north polar region, near Kraken Mare. It is the largest known sea of liquid methane on the lunar surface.
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