CHARLOTTE, N.C. — To celebrate the first anniversary of the James Webb telescope, NASA released this brand-new image called Rho Ophiuchi.
This area shows about 50 young stars in a cocoon of gas and dust. At 390 lightyears away, it’s the closest star-forming region to Earth.
NASA astrophysicist Taylor Hutchinson says James Webb can go where we have never been before by working in tandem with other observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope.
"The power in this observatory is not only the new instrumentation that we have on it, the cutting edge feat of engineering that it is, we also have the kind of light that is looking at so it's peering into a type of light into this universe that we really didn't have the ability to look at in great detail before," Hutchinson explained.
Nicola Fox, the associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said in a statement that James Webb is an "engineering marvel that will give us a more intricate understanding of galaxies, stars, and the atmospheres of planets outside our solar system."
Hutchinson says for her it’s all about discovering new and fascinating things about how the universe is growing and evolving.
"We're seeing kind of with new eyes, the entire universe, and it really in a different light!" Hutchinson said.
Contact Brittany Van Voorhees at bvanvoorhe@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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