Tesseract. As one may know from Madeline L’Engle’s Time Quintet, is the fifth dimension. It is all four dimensions combined to create a wrinkle in time; a way to travel through space in the shortest path possible.
As though folding the fabric of space, it brings millions of years of the universe’s history — visages as early as 100 million years after its creation with the Big Bang — to life and delivers it to the present we now exist. The farther out in the universe we peer into, the farther back in time we go back. Like the tesseract, this instrument bridges us to the early universe of star births and galaxy formations, to supermassive black holes and galaxies devouring each other. We are bridged to the future of neighboring life and the possibility of a Planet B. We will see the universe unfold its secrets behind the eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope.
A Gift 20 Years in the Making
All gifts big or small, should be made, chosen, and given with full intentions and carried out with much thought. More so one that is double, even triple the size of an average human being.
Continuously questioning what’s next, as early as the mid-1990s, the creation of an infrared telescope of a higher degree than what was then a yet-to-be-launched Hubble Space Telescope, was already in mind. NASA Centers, International Space Agencies, and partners joined in the planning and development of the Next Generation Space Telescope that will later be known as the James Webb Space Telescope. Construction began in 2004, and after almost two decades passing — on December 25, a perfect Christmas gift, the James Webb Space Telescope was launched.
Beyond the Red Light
Capturing the stars is no easy feat, especially those from far, far away. To our eyes, the stars are just tiny diamond-like specks forming a bejeweled night sky, but as we pursue to look closer, we see the universe in all its glory. Cosmic cliffs reaching their peaks and throughs; galaxies, a quintet, pulling and attracting each other to their centers; even stars at the end of their time, bursting out the last of their life. All made possible through the radiant energy beyond the red light—Infrared Radiation.
Visible light as we know it consists of colors: violet on one end and red on the other; beyond the visible red light, on the spectrum, we have what is known as Infrared Light. The Webb Telescope functions mainly on the use of its primary mirror and Infrared Instruments: Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCAM), Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph/ Fine Guidance Sensor (NIRISS/FGIS). These instruments, comprising the feat of engineering that is the JWST, make the dreamlike images of the telescope possible. Recording light with utmost precision, the JWST can focus through the brightest of fields with galaxies and stars all burning their brightest to see the dimmest targets of ancient galaxies. It can deliver the sharpest possible images, and even peer into exoplanets’ atmospheres and inspect their composition and signs of life-sustaining elements like water and carbon dioxide. The JWST uses imaging and spectroscopy to investigate these, including the motion of the target and its temperature. It can even sight clusters millions of years beyond our time.
The Universe in Images
Seven months after the space launching of this 20-year-old project, breaths were taken, and hearts were captured as the first images from the Webb telescope were unveiled. The Carina Nebula created waves in people’s minds as cosmic dust birthed hundreds, even thousands of new stars, all specks dim and bright caught by Webb’s IR-sensitive cameras. Stephan’s Quintet, which has been featured before on the Hubble Telescope, is back more enormous than ever with features new to the quintet. It features galaxies and black holes disturbing and affecting each other’s respective gravitational fields.
In its final moments, the Southern Ring Nebula is captured in its dimming light as it exhausts itself of its gasses and dust. While on the other hand, recognized as the deepest and sharpest IR image of the distant universe, as per NASA, SMACS 0723 captures even the faintest of light from the vastly distant galaxies, all while braving the brighter ones around it. Galaxies of varying distances and brightness litter the entirety of the picture, one even showing to be from light from 13 billion years ago. Lastly, we have the WASP-96 b, which analyzes its atmosphere; and showcases its composition and the amount of liquid water H20 present.
James Webb Space Telescope's first four images. Credit: nasa.gov
In the pursuit of changing question marks to exclamation points, we have reached further into the universe and further back into its history. We search the past for answers to questions that may bring the future and we search for our future as we peer into neighboring planets in search of signs of existing life and life-sustaining elements. As we continue to build new instruments of science, we stack up knowledge and the ability to learn more by joining past and present instruments to fill in holes the others lack. Webb has become our real-life tesseract, folding the fabric of time; and bringing us to the universe of old, billions of years before Webb itself existed. We may not be like Meg Murry, traveling in-body to different periods in time, but we have the past in our hands and the future in sight.
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