The James Webb Telescope unveils a teaser image of the far reaches of the cosmos

There are only a few days left to wait to discover the first high resolution color photos taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. In the meantime, Nasa has unveiled an extraordinary image showing the depth of the universe.

 

This image, the result of 72 exposures over 32 hours, was taken by the telescope’s precision guidance detector, the tool that allows the ultra-sophisticated craft to target and focus on objects of interest.

 

 

The image offers, according to Nasa, a tantalizing glimpse of what the scientific community and thousands of enthusiasts are eagerly awaiting: the unveiling, scheduled for July 12, of the first high-resolution color images of Webb.

 

It’s further than anything mankind has ever looked at before, Bill Nelson, the head of the U.S. agency, warned at the end of June during a press conference at the Space Telescope Science Institute, the operational center of this $10 billion engineering jewel launched in December and now located 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

 

James Webb is able to look further into the cosmos than any telescope before it thanks to its huge main mirror, and its instruments that perceive infrared signals, allowing it to peer through dust clouds.

 

 

On July 12, Nasa intends to make public the first James Webb telescope spectroscopy of a distant planet, an exoplanet.