See James Webb Space Telescope’s First Images

I previously wrote about the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. Following a successful launch and then unfolding and assembly of the telescope in space, images have been taken and transmitted back to earth. According to a NASA media advisory, the very first images from the James Webb Space Telescope will be released to the public on Tuesday, July 12, 2022.

The list of cosmic targets for the first images include:

• Carina Nebula
• WASP-96 b (spectrum)
• Southern Ring Nebula
• Stephan’s Quintet
• SMACS 0723

The James Webb Space Telescope will acquire images using near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths which will allow us to better understand the origins of our universe. According to this article, “The Hubble Space Telescope is optimized for visible light but can also detect some ultraviolet (shorter wavelengths than visible) and some infrared. Webb, however, was developed as an infrared specialist and can take on a much larger span of infrared wavelengths.”

The significance of Webb’s ability to detect infrared wavelengths is that due to the expansion of the universe, light from distant objects that are moving away from earth are stretched into longer (more red) wavelengths, an effect known as redshift. It is expected that the capture of infrared light will allow us to view our cosmic history dating back 13.5 billion years to the time that galaxies were formed.

For a listing of all the ways you can view the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope, check out this blog from NASA.

Dial-A-Moon

Most of us learned in school that there is a lunar cycle that repeats monthly (every 29.5 days). In the lunar cycle, there are different phases of the Moon that represent different quarters of the cycle (at least from earth’s vantage point of only half of the Moon’s sphere): waxing crescent, first quarter, waxing gibbous, full Moon, waning gibbous, third quarter, waning crescent, and new Moon.

However, we all know that the appearance of the Moon on any given day does not always fall neatly into one of the named phases. If you’d like to see what the Moon looks like at any given time in 2022, look no further than Dial-A-Moon which is provided to us by the NASA Scientific Visualization Studio.

Dial-A-Moon lets you see what the Moon looks like at any hour of any day, past or present, in calendar year 2022. Want to know what the Moon will look like on your birthday or on a night when you’ll be camping? Just enter the month, day, and hour in Coordinated Universal Time.

The site also provides links to many high-resolution images and videos that illustrate the Moon phases and the lesser known concepts of libration and position angle. Here’s one such example: