Jaw-Dropping ‘Wow!’ Images Planned By NASA As Webb Telescope’s Journey Ends. Here’s What To Expect And When

When you spend $10 billion on a space telescope you have to justify it. It’s also something of a tradition for astronomers to celebrate the start of science operations on a new telescope with a selection of images to showcase exactly what it can do.

That’s exactly what NASA will do when the James Webb Space Telescope—or Webb, for short—is ready for science.

“We are planning a series of “wow” images to be released at the end of commissioning when we start normal science operations that are designed to showcase what this telescope can do,” said Jane Rigby, Webb Operations Project Scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center at a press briefing in January. “They will showcase all four science instruments and they will really knock everybody’s socks off.”

The plan is to release images at one time and not as they’re taken. That could mean that the world will have to wait a while because a lot of testing needs to be done in the wake of Webb being fully deployed last weekend.

So when will we see Webb’s “wow” images? My best guess is the last week of May 2022. By then NASA will have aligned the 18 hexagonal of Webb’s 21 feet/6.5 meter mirror and collimated it using a few bright stars.

Webb’s ‘wow’ images

Webb is up there to look for “cosmic dawn”—the first stars—study black holes and examine exoplanet atmospheres, but the initial batch of images are likely just to be drop-dead gorgeous space images for general consumption.

So expect to see a few Hubble Vs. Webb images that show-off exactly what the new infrared space telescope is for as compared to the old ultra-violet/visible space telescope. Just as interesting will be the Spitzer vs. Webb images that compare the original infrared space telescope to its successor, though it’s also likely that we’ll see Webb’s images in combination with those two telescopes and those from the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Either way, this is what we can expect to be in the running for Webb’s initial “Wow” images:

1. The Pillars of Creation

If NASA wants to starkly show just what Webb is capable of then what better target than the so-called “Pillars of Creation,” an iconic shot taken in various wavelengths of light by Hubble?

These fingers of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula in the constellation of Serpens have already been taken in visible light and near-infrared light by Hubble and could be “as taste of what to expect” from Webb, as this tweet makes clear. What price a Webb do-over?

2. The Horsehead Nebula

This is one of Hubble’s most iconic—the Horsehead Nebula (or Barnard 33) in the constellation of Orion—which it imaged in near-infrared in 2013. Should we expect a Webb-style re-hash of the “great seahorse in the sky?”

3. The Tarantula Nebula

We know that many of Webb’s first test images will be of objects within the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), an irregular dwarf galaxy that orbits our Milky Way galaxy. NASA says that’s because it’s close to the plane of the Solar System and so easy for Webb to see regardless of the date it launched (if you recall, Webb was delayed and delayed).

Inside the LMC is the Tarantula Nebula. It’s a famous target for astrophotography. Best thought of as a super-massive version of the Orion Nebula, it’s is one hundred times larger and the biggest star-forming region in our part of the Universe. It’s so luminous that if it was as close to us as the Orion Nebula is (about 1,300 light years), it would cast a shadow on Earth at night.

4. A Webb Ultra Deep Field?

Arguably the most important images taken by Hubble are the Hubble Deep Fields, composite photographs that include small, redshifted galaxies from when the Universe was just 800 million years old. Given that Webb has a much larger mirror and will be able to image red galaxies around 250 million years after the Big Bang, expect to see something similar—though whether that will be in the first tranche of show-off images is anyone’s guess. 

5. The Monkey Head Nebula

Here’s another target of Hubble that the ageing space telescope has imaged in both visible and the near-infrared. A region of stars being born about 6,400 light-years away, the Monkey Head Nebula (NGC 2174) has a lot of dust clouds and glowing gas so could be a good show-off target for Webb.

What colour will Webb’s images be?

Almost all space images are presented in false colour. That’s because if left alone many astronomical images would simply be black and white. The addition of colour filters makes the images more comprehensible and comparable.

Webb will observe primarily in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, specifically from 0.6 to 28 micrometres. These longer, redder wavelengths than visible light means Webb can image folds of gas and pierce through the dust that obscures, for instance, the inner regions of most nebulae and a lot of stars in both our own and distant galaxies.

However, Webb will also detect visible light in the red, orange and up to the yellow part of the visible spectrum. 

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.