James Webb Space Telescope: Differences in the Hubble image of the same point in the universe

8 hours ago

Side by side images produced by the Hubble Telescope and James Webb — Illustrative image,

The difference between the two pictures is noticeable.

The release of the first image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope by the President of the United States, Joe Biden, on Monday (12/7) has many people, especially those passionate about astronomy, astonished by the details it reveals about the universe. .

What the now famous image shows is a group of galaxies in the Volan constellation, known as SMACS 0723.

The image captured the shape of celestial bodies more than 13 billion years ago.

Amber Straw, the scientist behind the project, told the BBC: “The picture is amazing on its own. But what we can do with it is what excites me the most.”

However, this is not the first time that a man-made space telescope has pointed to the same area.

The Hubble Telescope, the predecessor of Webb, launched into space in 1990, had already taken an image of the same cluster.

Differences in depth and resolution are visible to the naked eye, but why are they so noticeable?

According to the US space agency, NASA, the James Webb Telescope does not replace the Hubble telescope, but is a successor to it, and its capabilities are “not identical”.

“Web is dedicated to observing the universe in infrared light, while Hubble will continue to study it mainly in ultraviolet and light waves, although it has some ability in infrared,” NASA said on its official website.

“Webb also has a much larger mirror than Hubble,” he adds.

This makes Web images clearer, because Web technology “cleans” interstellar dust from images, while Hubble’s technology does not.

Something that also allows to capture the brightness of some stars that previously seemed faint.

For this reason, Hubble took several weeks to visualize this “part” of the universe, while Webb took only about 12 hours.