IPOL.ID – A team of astronomers has found the most distant black hole using the Webb Space Telescope. But that record is not expected to last long. The latest findings mark a year since the first set of images released by NASA from the telescope.
Launching in late 2021, Webb is the largest and most powerful telescope ever sent into space. The mirrors are the size of several parking lots and the curtains are the size of a tennis court.
With such a large size, the telescope had to be folded in an origami style so that it could fit through the nose end of the European rocket, Ariane, which was ready to take off from French Guiana.
A year ago, the telescope’s first scientific images and results were released by NASA with joy. Among the images is a cluster of galaxies called SMACS 0723.
Nearly a year after that milestone, a team of astronomers announced a new discovery on July 11, 2023: a distant black hole captured by the Webb telescope.
Re-examining several images from the James Webb Space Telescope this year, the massive telescope has captured dazzling stars, galaxy clusters, nebulae where stars are born and die, and images of Saturn, complete with its brightly shining rings.
Among the images is Wolf–Rayet, which is known as the brightest star. Amber Straughn from NASA explained about the star. “The light of the star travels across space for about 15 thousand light years, until it is finally captured by the detector on the telescope (Webb),” he explained.
With Webb, the team of scientists hoped to catch a glimpse of the light from the first stars and galaxies that formed 13.7 billion years ago, just 100 million years from the Big Bang that created the universe.
“We said last fall that we would know the telescope was working if we got an image of a star that looked like a star. And now we have it. This image is actually a 2100 second exposure, taken at roughly two microns.
The telescope is designed to work at or above these wavelengths. We see not only the star and the stellar diffraction spikes, but also the other stars very clearly around it,” said Lee Feinberg, manager of the Webb optical telescope elements at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Webb is the largest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever sent from Earth. The design is complex, the scope ambitious. With a budget of $10 billion, this telescope is also the most expensive. Its infrared eyes will ‘catch’ black holes and look for alien creatures. It scours the planet’s atmosphere in search of water and other possible clues to life.
Jane Rigby, of Webb operations project, NASA, said, “The goal is to build a telescope that is a hundred times more powerful than anything we have ever had. From the preliminary engineering data we’ve seen so far, we know we’ll be able to meet the very demanding science requirements. The engineered images we saw this time are as sharp as those the Hubble telescope can take.”
The team of astronomers found the most distant black hole using the Webb Telescope on July 11. But that record is not expected to last long. The signal from this black hole is weak, so more observations are needed.
Webb had spotted another black hole that looked closer to the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago, but that finding is still under review, according to lead researchers at the University of Texas at Austin. The findings will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. (team/voaindonesia)
2023-07-29 00:37:46
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