APOD: Webb's First Deep Field (2022 Jul 13)

[APOD Robot]

Webb's First Deep Field

Explanation: This is the deepest, sharpest infrared image of the cosmos so far. The view of the early Universe toward the southern constellation Volans was achieved in 12.5 hours of exposure with the NIRCam instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope. Of course the stars with six visible spikes are well within our own Milky Way. That diffraction pattern is characteristic of Webb's 18 hexagonal mirror segments operating together as a single 6.5 meter diameter primary mirror. The thousands of galaxies flooding the field of view are members of the distant galaxy cluster SMACS0723-73, some 4.6 billion light-years away. Luminous arcs that seem to infest the deep field are even more distant galaxies though. Their images are distorted and magnified by the dark matter dominated mass of the galaxy cluster, an effect known as gravitational lensing. Analyzing light from two separate arcs below the bright spiky star, Webb's NIRISS instrument indicates the arcs are both images of the same background galaxy. And that galaxy's light took about 9.5 billion years to reach the James Webb Space Telescope.

<< Previous APOD

This Day in APOD

Next APOD >>

[RocketRon]

Look at all them stars.
Look at all them galaxies.
Look at all that gravitational lensing.

Mr Einstein would be tickled pink.
And (quite) a few other astronomers.
This new telescope is a quantum leap forward indeed.
Soo much more depth than the Hubble, which was itself remarkable.
(once sorted).

[supamario]

And this is only 2.4 arcminutes of sky.. mind boggling.

[AVAO]

The level of detail in the WEBB images is absolutely stunning. What surprises me is the fact that the strongly redshifted galaxies from the early universe - that are now visible compared to HUBBLE - many of these are already highly structured.





https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/522 ... 53d5_o.jpg

jac berne (flickr)

[mostly cloudy]

And this is only 2.4 arcminutes of sky.. mind boggling.

Many minds are boggled just now, and it's only beginning. I'm afraid I am by nature a pessimist; the successful deployment of the JWT just staggers me.

[rj rl]

The level of detail in the WEBB images is absolutely stunning. What surprises me is the fact that the strongly redshifted galaxies from the early universe - that are now visible compared to HUBBLE - many of these are already highly structured.

jac berne (flickr)

I was almost disappointed in a way, I was hoping for some truly bizarre creatures to show up in the early universe, but to my (quite amateur) eye they all look pretty normal so far

[Ann]

My first reaction to this James Webb Deep Field image was... Oh. It looks like the Hubble Deep Fields, doesn't it?

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

But then... Well, this isn't bad!

Note the large white blob at upper right, the one that has three cores inside it. (Yes, I get it, they are three different galaxies.) Note how a long broad faint stream of stars is flowing away to the lower left from this large white blob. And note that this stream of stars is peppered with little white dots of globular clusters. That sure ain't bad!

Note how one of the lensed elongated orange background galaxies, at center right, is surrounded by at least ten distinct and quite bright orange dots! Amazing! What are those things?

I would love to know what the colors mean. Look at the image above. To the lower right of the bright star is a reddish galaxy with a huge set of spiral arms. This galaxy is similar to M101. But to the lower left of the bright star, quite close to the lower left corner, is a starforming barred bluish spiral galaxy which is quite similar in size to the reddish one with the impressive and wide-ranging set of spiral arms.

Given the fact that these two galaxies are so relatively similar in size, what does it mean that they are so different in color? Is it all due to redshift, so that the red galaxy is much farther away than the blue one? Or is the red galaxy very dusty, whereas the blue galaxy is relatively dust-free?

Finally, many of the galaxies have obvious diffraction spikes coming out of their cores. Why are their cores so bright at infrared wavelengths?

Ann

[VictorBorun]

Finally, many of the galaxies have obvious diffraction spikes coming out of their cores. Why are their cores so bright at infrared wavelengths?
Ann

Webb seems to discover ultra-bright, in mean IR waves, cores in some galaxies. There must be active black holes of 10 million sun masses heating the interstellar media and the accretion disk

Some Infra Red Quasars or anything

[VictorBorun]

Note how one of the lensed elongated orange background galaxies, at center right, is surrounded by at least ten distinct and quite bright orange dots! Amazing! What are those things?
Ann

IMHO one of the lensed elongated orange background galaxies, at center right is not lensed.
It looks out of the general elongating trend.
So the spots must be companions of an edge-on ultra-red disk galaxy (if such oddity may be called a galaxy).
Besides if that object is close it can be tiny

[FLPhotoCatcher]

The level of detail in the WEBB images is absolutely stunning. What surprises me is the fact that the strongly redshifted galaxies from the early universe - that are now visible compared to HUBBLE - many of these are already highly structured.





https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/522 ... 53d5_o.jpg

jac berne (flickr)

Hi all, long time, no see.

The comparison tool here is great: https://johnedchristensen.github.io/WebbCompare/

I notice that the really red object left of, and a bit lower from the brightest star is completely not visible in the Hubble image. Why is it SO red?

[FLPhotoCatcher]

I have circled a galaxy that seems to appear four times, the two with the "R" next to it seem to be mirrored.

The squared ones seem to be two of a different galaxy, also mirrored.

Can lensed galaxies be mirrored?

[Karthik]

Note how one of the lensed elongated orange background galaxies, at center right, is surrounded by at least ten distinct and quite bright orange dots! Amazing! What are those things?
Ann

bright orange dots.jpg

IMHO one of the lensed elongated orange background galaxies, at center right is not lensed.
It looks out of the general elongating trend.
So the spots must be companions of an edge-on ultra-red disk galaxy (if such oddity may be called a galaxy).
Besides if that object is close it can be tiny

The Webb page (!) says that they are star clusters.

"One galaxy speckled with star clusters appears near the bottom end of the bright central star’s vertical diffraction
spike – just to the right of a long orange arc. The long, thin ladybug-like galaxy is flecked with pockets of star formation.
Draw a line between its “wings” to roughly match up its star clusters, mirrored top to bottom.
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/medi ... 5CSH1Q5Z1Z

[Karthik]

If we move left from the brightest star, there is a galaxy with a blood-red, nebulous feature in the middle.

blood_red_galaxy.png (22.69 KiB) Viewed 9238 times

[FLPhotoCatcher]

If we move left from the brightest star, there is a galaxy with a blood-red, nebulous feature in the middle.

blood_red_galaxy.png

Yep, that's the one I was referring to above.
The center of the galaxy must have been super bright.

[Ann]

If we move left from the brightest star, there is a galaxy with a blood-red, nebulous feature in the middle.

My guess is that this is an "M82" galaxy, with runaway star formation in (or close to) its center. The copious star formation creates enormous amounts of dust, which should make this galaxy look "darker red" (that is, dominated by longer-wave photons) near its center than in the (rest of the) disk.

Ann

[VictorBorun]

The Webb page (!) says that they are star clusters.

"One galaxy speckled with star clusters appears near the bottom end of the bright central star’s vertical diffraction
spike – just to the right of a long orange arc. The long, thin ladybug-like galaxy is flecked with pockets of star formation.
Draw a line between its “wings” to roughly match up its star clusters, mirrored top to bottom.
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/medi ... 5CSH1Q5Z1Z

Like this?

[Karthik]

The Webb page (!) says that they are star clusters.

"One galaxy speckled with star clusters appears near the bottom end of the bright central star’s vertical diffraction
spike – just to the right of a long orange arc. The long, thin ladybug-like galaxy is flecked with pockets of star formation.
Draw a line between its “wings” to roughly match up its star clusters, mirrored top to bottom.
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/medi ... 5CSH1Q5Z1Z

Like this?bright orange dots+.jpg

They are not talking about mirroring the galaxy itself. They are saying that roughly the same number of star clusters can be seen above and below the galaxy, if we draw a line through it.

[Redbone]

Infinity anyone?

[orin stepanek]

going places where no man has ever been before! and this is only
the beginning!

[johnnydeep]

Untitled22.JPG

I have circled a galaxy that seems to appear four times, the two with the "R" next to it seem to be mirrored.

The squared ones seem to be two of a different galaxy, also mirrored.

Can lensed galaxies be mirrored?

Why do you think that your 4 circled galaxies are the same one? They look completely unrelated to me.

[johnnydeep]

Ok, there is WAY too much stuff to talk about in this FIRST image from Webb. Hubble is now just a pile of garbage in comparison

A technical question: I don't understand why this linked-to pic of the spectra of two very similar looking lensed images proves they are one and the same galaxy:

Click to view full size image

Why couldn't the two similar spectra be from two separate but still very similar galaxies at the same distance?

[johnnydeep]

The level of detail in the WEBB images is absolutely stunning. What surprises me is the fact that the strongly redshifted galaxies from the early universe - that are now visible compared to HUBBLE - many of these are already highly structured.

...

jac berne (flickr)

Hi all, long time, no see.

The comparison tool here is great: https://johnedchristensen.github.io/WebbCompare/

I notice that the really red object left of, and a bit lower from the brightest star is completely not visible in the Hubble image. Why is it SO red?

I'm only seeing the comparison slider tool showing for the Carina nebula image. Are the others there too, but just not working for me perhaps?

[supamario]

Infinity anyone?

Who's to say, through curved space, we aren't looking at ourselves at our distant past.

[De58te]

Nice. What surprised me most is that the James Webb's images from its hexagonal mirrors still produces rectangular images with perfect 90 degree corners. Unlike my binoculars that has round lenses and it produces a round image. The explanation was for the old round camera lenses producing square images was because that is how the photo negative film was made. And of course science text books were rectangular and demanded rectangular photos. But nowadays when paper books are on the way out and most images are processed by computer there is no reason to still cut the round or hexagonal images into squares.

[isoparix]

These images are, I suppose, false-colour representations of infrared data. How much has the spectrum been shifted upwards - two octaves? ten?