Saturday afternoon, July 9, 2022. Astronomer Amaya Moro-Martín is preparing a presentation for a work-related event taking place on Tuesday. She has been holed up for hours in a room of her house, with only her computer for company. At that moment, her husband knocks on the door. "Can I come in with the dinner tray?" he asks from the other side. "If you do, I'll have to kill you," she snaps, as if it were a spy movie. But it's not that Moro-Martín has converted to the secret agent trade. Much less that she's gone crazy, although she admits to a certain "paranoia" about it. The Carina Nebula, captured by the James Webb telescope, looms majestically on the screen in front of her; that same snapshot that the rest of us mortals will still have to wait several days to see and that has been jealously guarded - along with four other images - by the consortium that makes up the most powerful (and also most expensive) space telescope in the history of humanity. This is the story of the inner history behind the photographs that mark a new era of astronomy, a before and after in our vision of the universe. Since 2019, Moro-Martín, a researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI, the organization in charge of coordinating the work not only of this telescope but also others, such as Hubble), has worked in the small group of seven people in charge of selecting the first Webb objectives, destined to show the scientific community the full power of the new observatory and to leave the rest of society open-mouthed. "The problem is that we didn't know when it was going to be launched, much less when the fine-tuning would be finished," she explains to ABC via video call from her home in Baltimore, the same house that often served as a "safe house" for her secret meetings. "We had to constantly rework the plans. That's why we went from 150 possible sources to 70, then to 20... It's been a very long process and, on top of that, ultra-confidential. And on top of that, the pandemic caught us." Hidden in her house. During those months when the entire world only interacted with her "cohabitants," Moro-Martín couldn't comment on her project or on her husband, Alberto Noriega-Crespo, also an astronomer who, in fact, works for one of the instruments on the James Webb. "I've literally hidden in my house," she says. Finally, on Christmas Day last year, the telescope took off, beginning its journey toward the Lagrange point 2, 1.6 million kilometers above our heads, from where it will observe space for the next two decades. After deploying and calibrating its instruments, it was time to observe the sources chosen by the Moro-Martín group, creating what would be the telescope's first full-color scientific images. Its debut. "The system reflects the coordinates it points to, so we made a lot of firewalls so no one would know where we were looking. We didn't want to ruin the surprise we'd worked so hard to create," he says. With the team gathered in front of a poster with the legendary Hubble image of the 'Pillars of Creation' ("we marked it as our ideal," he says), the images began to arrive. "The first thing I felt was a lot of relief. A lot of emotion, but above all relief. The telescope was working, and we had material for the photos!" The Previous Images However, the Webb, while unfolding its 18 mirrors to form a 6.5-meter diameter "supermirror," opening its enormous sunshade as big as a tennis court, and testing its four delicate instruments, had already demonstrated, in small doses, its full potential. Witness to this was Macarena García-Marín, an astrophysicist at the European Space Agency (ESA)—an organization that has collaborated very closely with NASA and the Canadian Space Agency in the development, construction, and launch of the Webb—and leader in Baltimore of the MIRI development team, the team that "looks" at the universe in mid-infrared. "Background galaxies appeared everywhere, even when we focused on a single object that, in theory, was 'isolated.' That shows how sensitive the telescope is." Macarena García-Marín, Astrophysicist at the European Space Agency "I saw images from the time the instruments were being set up, and even then they were spectacular," García-Marín told ABC. "We were surprised by the quality and depth. And, above all, because background galaxies appeared everywhere, even when we focused on a single object that, in theory, was 'isolated.' That shows how sensitive the telescope is." In the scientific images, which we all saw a few days ago, you can see how the entire background of each and every one of the photographs shown is riddled with points of light, stars, and very distant galaxies that 'sneak' into the images. Not surprisingly, these swarms of star systems number in the hundreds of billions, although their light is often so faint that they are impossible to detect. Until Webb. This image was taken during Webb's calibration tests. Its depth had already surpassed all previous snapshots. 'Coloring' Space Although García-Marín was not part of the group that selected the images, he was able to see them before they were released to the public. Because, in recent months, the group of seven people expanded to around thirty, including instrument managers (like García-Marín), who approved the images, and those in charge of producing the final result, including the colorization of the data arriving from Webb. "But even if they are 'colorized,' we're looking at real images," the astrophysicist points out. "We can't see colors in infrared, but the filters assign a coherent and appropriate color to highlight what we want and make them understandable to everyone." It's a bit like the filters we apply to our photographs on social media, which emphasize certain aspects. This allows us to capture, for example, all the internal violence of the "Stephan's Quintet" photographed by MIRI. In it, you can see four of the five galaxies colliding and interacting with each other. The fifth, the one on the far left, is actually an independent galaxy that, from perspective, appears to be integrated into the group, although it is much closer to us than the rest (about 40 million light-years away compared to the 300 million years away of its 'companions'). "These galaxies do not exist as we see them now, but have evolved." "It's definitely my favorite," says García-Marín. "These galaxies do not exist as we see them now, but have evolved. And here, in the 'Stephan's Quintet,' two things could have happened: they could have ended up merging into one, or one could have continued its evolution independently. It's like having photographs of the universe at different moments in its life." Like the universe's family album. The different "perspective" of each instrument can be appreciated with the naked eye in the two images of the Southern Rings Nebula, 2,500 light-years away. The image on the right, taken with the Mid-Infrared Camera (MIRI), reveals two stars, very close together, in its center: the dimmer, red one is a dying star that has been emitting rings of gas and dust in all directions for millions of years. And the interaction with its brighter companion has created the irregular patterns that we can see better thanks to the image on the left, taken with the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), and it explains why this formation is also called the Eight Outbursts Nebula. NASA, ESA, CSA and STSCI 1 Despite being called Stephan’s Quintet, this galaxy is very far from the other four and is its own body, although the perspective makes it look like part of the group 2 The upper galaxy, NGC 7319, hosts a supermassive black hole 24 million times the mass of the Sun. Although the black hole itself is obviously not visible, the surrounding material it is accreting, which shines as brightly as 40,000 Suns. MIRI Sees Through the Dust Surrounding This Black Hole to Reveal the Surprisingly Bright Active Galactic Nucleus 3 In this image, red marks regions of dust and star formation, as well as extremely distant early galaxies. Blue point sources show dust-free stars or star clusters. Diffuse blue areas indicate dust that has a significant amount of hydrocarbon molecules. For the small background galaxies scattered throughout the image, the green and yellow colors represent more distant, earlier galaxies, which are also rich in these hydrocarbons. The Deepest Photo "In this image, we found something very special: the streak on the left of the nebula. At first, we didn't know what it was, but when the filters were changed, you can see a galaxy seen from the side, in which you can even see the nucleus." This "spontaneous" galaxy in the photo also attracted a lot of attention in the Moro-Martín group. That sharp streak even led to some betting. "I even took down a picture to check that it actually matched the path of the rays. It's not very scientific, but at first we had no idea what it could be. Subsequent images revealed that it was clearly a galaxy." Moro-Martín's group learned just four days before the presentation of the images that it would be US President Joe Biden who would reveal the first photo the day before. "It was funny because we did everything possible to avoid anything being seen, and in the end, it was the president himself who ended up leaking it," she says, amused. NASA, ESA, CSA, and STSCI 1 Most of the bright spots are not stars, but galaxies made up of billions of stars. The oldest galaxy in this image dates back 13.1 billion years, just 700 million years after the Big Bang, although not all the bodies present have yet been analysed and there may be other, older objects out there. 2 The eight-pointed flare is characteristic of the Webb: light diffraction (due to the hexagonal geometry of the telescope's primary mirror) is the cause of this pattern. 3 The extended red arcs are very distant galaxies amplified by the gravitational lensing effect of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, located about 5 billion light-years away and in the foreground of the image. This snapshot, the deepest ever taken of our universe (that is, the one that has seen the furthest back in time, the oldest light), is the main candidate to start producing scientific discoveries: for the moment, a 13.1 billion year old galaxy has been found, just 700 million years old (a cosmic breath away). after the Big Bang. "But the telescope will be able to reach further back, up to 13.5 billion years. Surely, there are younger galaxies in that image, but not everything has yet been studied in such detail. There's still a lot of research to be done," explains García-Marín, who already knows groups of researchers who are coming together to get the most out of this document. "Not only have the images been made available to the entire scientific community; the data behind them are also available, so in the coming months we're going to see how science takes the spotlight it deserves." Although, if we're talking about information, perhaps the "non-photo" of the exoplanet WASP 96b, 1,150 light-years from our Solar System, is the one: its light spectrum, an indirect image of the composition of its atmosphere, has revealed that this hot, inflated gas giant—twice the size of our Jupiter—has water, clouds, and haze. "We've seen this spectrum before, but not with this precision," David Barrado Navascués, Professor of Astrophysics Research at the INTA-CSIC Astrobiology Center, whose team has contributed to the development and fine-tuning of the NIRSpec and MIRI spectrographs, explains to ABC. However, despite being involved in the project for more than two decades, both he and his group found out about it the same day it was made public to the rest of the world. "The images are certainly impressive; but I felt much more excited during the launch." In fact, he says that the planet's spectrum is what has caught his attention the most. "We can see that the margins of error are very small, which tells us that the telescope is very stable. It will help us make great progress in the field of exoplanets. And this is just the appetizer." Spectrometry of the exoplanet WASP 96b, where the signatures of water in the atmosphere can be seen. NASA, CSA, ESA and STCSI The 'star' Carina Despite the beauty of the rest of the images, the star of the presentation was the photo of the Carina Nebula: its 'cosmic cliffs' have been compared to steep mountains, where you can even see the mist rising from their slopes. However, we are looking at the edges of a nearby, young region of a stellar nursery called NGC 3324, 7,600 light-years away from us. And it is an area that has little to do with the tranquility of the mountains: when a massive star is born, one of its first actions is to destroy the nebula in which it was born, so it tries to wipe out everything around it. This is followed by photoevaporation, which occurs when the gases are ionized by radiation, and they disperse. This 'attacks' the pillars or ledges, which are perfectly distinguishable in the Webb images, and which fight against the radiation to avoid being isolated. NASA, ESA, CSA and STCSI 1 When a massive star is born, one of its first actions is to destroy the nebula in which it was born. This is followed by photoevaporation, which occurs when gases are ionized by radiation and disperse. This 'attacks' the pillars like the one in the image, which are trying to resist the radiation. 2 The 'steam' that appears to emerge from the 'mountains' is, in fact, extremely hot ionized gas and dust erupting from the nebula due to the relentless radiation. In addition, jets can be seen emerging from the forming stars, which are shot out. 3 The cavernous regions have been carved into the Carina Nebula by intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from enormously large and hot young stars, located at the center of the bubbles, which can be seen thanks to the resolution of the James Webb. Barrado, Moro-Martín and García-Marín find it difficult to describe the image in scientific terms. "Here we can see serenity versus destruction, which resembles a kind of tsunami sweeping everything away," says Barrado. "It has such resolution that you can see bubbles from the very hot and dense reaction being created in that area," says García-Marín. "And the image has such depth that it seems you can almost touch it, like a cottony material." Moro-Marín explains that the team was clear that the snapshot of the Carina Nebula "had to be among the first that Webb would show": "It represents the dawn of a new era in astronomy. It was the last one to be revealed, kicking off a new beginning, that of data analysis by all the world's astronomers, who can now download the information and begin doing science. It's incredible." Certainly, the spotlight now falls on the scientists, who will have to reveal to the world what the images can't be seen with the naked eye: from the age of those background galaxies that dot every snapshot, to more data on that exotic exoplanet orbiting a star similar to our own, to questions that haven't even been asked yet, but that will emerge as the data is collected. "I estimate that starting in the fall we'll start to see results and that we'll have a tsunami of new space information," Barrado notes. In parallel, observations by the scientific groups assigned their time will begin. Meanwhile, the Webb spacecraft won't leave the rest of us without news for long. "There are more photos that will be published in the coming weeks and months. We have real treasures yet to be revealed," says Moro-Martín enigmatically, who, it seems, will have to continue keeping space secrets from her husband for some time to come.
