Webb space telescope snaps pic of a very powerful, and unique, object     DATE: 2024-06-01 20:31:39

It might look puny. But this pink object is awfully powerful.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists captured a rich image teeming with some 20,000 galaxies. At center is one of the most brilliant objects in space: a quasar, which is a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy that's feasting on bounties of cosmic matter — and releasing outbursts of energy as it shreds apart and eats. That's why such an object is millions to billionstimes brighter than the sun.

In the image above and below, researchers captured this galactic scene to better grasp how the universe evolved over 13 billion years ago, at a pivotal time in cosmic history when colossal clouds of murky gas began to clear up. The universe's Dark Ages had finally ended.

Here's what you're seeing:

SEE ALSO:Wow, the Webb telescope just opened up a new realm of the universeThousands of galaxies in deep space.Can you spot the quasar?Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Simon Lilly (ETH Zürich) / Daichi Kashino (Nagoya University) / Jorryt Matthee (ETH Zürich) / Christina Eilers (MIT) / Rob Simcoe (MIT) / Rongmon Bordoloi (NCSU) / Ruari Mackenzie (ETH Zürich) // Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) / Ruari Macken

This distant quasar plays an important role in understanding how our universe evolved. Quasars are so bright, they appear as space "flashlights," which help to illuminate the ancient gas between Webb and the quasar. This allows astronomers to observe what transpired some 900 million years after the universe formed, when things in the cosmos changed dramatically: The opaque cloudiness of the universe cleared, and it became transparent.

With the help of Webb, the most powerful space observatory ever built, researchers are seeing that early galaxies were churning out stars, producing radiation that ultimately altered the thick gases and cleared the once-dark universe.

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"Galaxies, which are made up of billions of stars, are ionizing the gas around them, effectively transforming it into transparent gas," Simon Lilly, an astrophysicist at ETH Zürich, a research university in Switzerland, said in a statement.

An artist's illustration of a quasar at a galactic center.An artist's illustration of a quasar at a galactic center.Credit: NASA / ESA / J. Olmsted (STScI)

This research is part of a Webb science mission called Emission-line galaxies and Intergalactic Gas in the Epoch of Reionization, or EIGER. In the coming year, researchers plan to look at more brilliant quasars.

But that's not all Webb, and its scientists, will be doing.


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The Webb telescope's powerful abilities

The Webb telescope — a scientific collaboration between NASA, the ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency — is designed to peer into the deepest cosmos and reveal unprecedented insights about the early universe. But it's also peering at intriguing planets in our galaxy, and even the planets in our solar system.

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Here's how Webb is achieving unparalleled things, and likely will for decades: