Vatican response to James Webb telescope images

The director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory commented that the wonderful images of the first galaxies formed after the Big Bang, transmitted by the James Webb Space Telescope, reveal the “extraordinary power” of God and his “love for beauty.”

“We are very excited about the new images coming from Webb Telescope! These are beautiful pictures (…). “It’s a tantalizing glimpse of what we can learn about the universe in the future,” Guy Consolmagno, director of the observatory, said in a statement.

“The science that gave rise to the telescope is an attempt to use the intelligence that God has given us Understand the logic of the universe. Because the universe will not work if it is not logical.” But he noted that the universe is “not only logical, but also beautiful.”

“It is God’s revealed work for usAnd in it we can see both its extraordinary strength and its love for beauty,” confirmed Guy Consolmagno after discovering the first sign of water vapor in the atmosphere of an exoplanet.

“150 years ago, Father Angelo Secchi added a prism to the lens of his telescope on the roof of the Basilica of San Ignacio in Rome, and made the first spectroscopic measurements of the atmospheres of the planets of our solar system,” he recalls.

for the church The origin of the universe is still divinealthough its scientific doctrine has developed significantly in the last century.

In 1992 Pope John Paul II definitively rehabilitated Galileo Galilei, who was condemned by the Inquisition in 1633 for supporting the thesis of the Polish scientist Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) according to which the Earth revolves around itself and around the sun.

Images from the James Webb Telescope: A Window on the Universe’s Past

During a public event hosted by the White House in the United States, President Joe Biden, along with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, revealed to the world what astronomers determined was the deepest view of Earth’s past, our universe.

“This is the oldest documented light in the history of the universe Since 13 billion dollars. Let me say it again: 13 billion years, President Biden said. For his part, Bill Nelson confirmed that “this image covers a piece of the sky the size of a grain of sand at arm’s length outstretched. It is just a small part of the vast universe.”

“We can see possibilities that no one has seen before,” Biden said. “We can go places no one has gone before.”. James Webb is the telescope with which the image was taken and has information on the galaxy cluster SMACS 072, the constellation Pegasus, the Carina Nebula, the Southern Ring Nebula, the exoplanet WASP-96b (980 light-years away) and more.

Webb was launched in December 2021 from French Guiana on an Ariane 5 rocket. After a 1.6 million kilometer flight from Earth, it orbits the Sun in a space region called the Second Lagrange Point. The total cost of the project is estimated at approximately $10,000 million. NASA estimates that the Web may have a lifespan of 20 years.

Thanks to the telescope, “We’ve seen the effect of what happens when a planet and its atmosphere pass in front of the star, and the light from the star is filtered through the atmosphere, and can be broken down into wavelengths of light by NASA’s Knicole,” Colon said.

The discoveries don’t stop there. Webb took a picture of the Carina Nebula, one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky. It is located about 7,600 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. Nebulae are stellar nurseries in which stars are formed. Associated Press data say that the Carina Nebula hosts many massive stars, several times larger than the Sun.

Another James Webb trait, according to The Associated Press, is Neris, a slit-free spectrometer that also splits light into different wavelengths. It has several modes, including two specifically designed to study exoplanets that are particularly close to their parent stars, AP reports.

*With information from AFP.