(ORDO NEWS) — The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope’s largest first year program show many types of galaxies, including dazzling examples of spiral galaxies, gravitational lensing and evidence of galaxy mergers.
Scientists from the COSMOS-Web program have released mosaic images taken in early January by the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the Mid Infrared (MIRI) JWST instrument.
The COSMOS-Web program is aimed at mapping the earliest structures of the Universe and will allow creating a wide and deep survey of up to 1 million galaxies.
Over the course of 255 hours of observations, COSMOS-Web will map the sky to 0.6 square degrees with NIRCam, roughly the size of three full moons, and 0.2 square degrees with MIRI.
“This first COSMOS-Web image contains about 25,000 galaxies – an astonishing number, more than even what is found in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field,” said principal investigator Caitlin Casey.
“This is one of the largest images taken by JWST to date. And yet, that’s just 4 percent of the data we’ll get in a full review. When completed, this deep field will be astonishingly large and stunningly beautiful.”
COSMOS-Web has three main scientific goals: to deepen our understanding of the epoch of reionization, approximately 200,000 to 1 billion years after the Big Bang; identification and description of early massive galaxies in the first 2 billion years; and studying how dark matter has evolved along with the stellar composition of galaxies.
The mosaics were created on the basis of six telescope pointings made on January 5-6. In April and May, the telescope will make 77 sightings, about half the field, with the remaining 69 sightings scheduled for December 2023 and January 2024.
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