James Webb is the new NASA space telescope. Launched on Christmas Day, it is a real gift for scientists from around the world, who never stop discovering new stars in our sky thanks to him. With impressive abilities, James Webb is the ideal device to scrutinize the universe and understand the mysteries.
It was built to observe our neighborhood at a certain wavelength, that of infrared, just before the visible spectrum. Such a study of the universe makes it possible to (re) discover elements of the sky that we already know.
Recently, the European space agency used the telescope for observation. She looked at a protoplanetary disc. She managed to capture the winds and jets of the latter, a great first. As its name suggests, a protoplanetary disc is a heap of material, grouped in a circular form, before the creation of a planet.
Under the effect of gravity, this material will gradually be structured, giving birth to a planet in a few million years. The disc in question, nicknamed Hh.30 by scientists, is a brilliant object, located fairly close to the earth (450 years lights).
A comparative study
The idea of studying this protoplanetary disc is not trivial on the part of ESA. The European space agency actually wanted to carry out a comparative study. Indeed, this is not the first time that humanity has shot a telescope around Hh.30.
Hubble had already captured images of this region of our universe in the 2000s. If the images did not have the same quality, European scientists behind this new observation would like to see how, in almost two decades, gases and matter Within this disc were able to evolve.
Understanding how a planet is formed with a concrete example could allow researchers to refine their computer simulations and thus go up the history of our planet more precisely. Because the observation of the universe never has only one goal: better understandby mirror effect, Our own creation.
James Webb: an extraordinary telescope
The difference between the two shots allows scientists to see how the protoplanetary disc has evolved in recent years, but for the general public it is also a reminder of the immense progress made by NASA in particular with regard to its devices to observe the sky .
With such image quality (HH 30 is located 450 light years from us), it is easy to observe more or less distant objects, with a level of detail never seen. NASA plans to take advantage of it, it has taken over 30 years to build James Webb.
