(ORDO NEWS) — An analysis of the very first image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows that the MIRI instrument, developed in the Netherlands, is performing even better than expected.
Researchers at the University of Groningen demonstrate that an infrared telescope shows details of galaxies from a time when the universe was only about 1 billion years old.
This period is important for astronomers because it was then that the first galaxies were formed.
Thanks to infrared images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have been able to observe, among other things, galaxies that had not been discovered before.
Scientists have also been able to more accurately calculate how many stars are present in very young, distant galaxies.
Analysis co-author Karina Kaputi expects new and deeper images to emerge soon: “Maybe this will allow us to get a little bit into the dark ages.
When we developed the MIRI instrument, we secretly hoped that we would achieve this, but now it seems that this will actually happen.
MIRI was developed by NASA and ESA with several European partners. The MIRI spectrometer was developed through the efforts of the Netherlands Research School of Astronomy (NOVA) and research institutes in the United Kingdom and Germany.
The design and construction was carried out by the NOVA Optical-Infrared group at ASTRON in Dwingeloo in cooperation with several other Dutch institutes and universities.
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