Discover

A spectacular view provided by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, of ‘Cosmic Cliffs’ within the Carina Nebula, about 7,600 light years away from Earth, actually a star-forming region called NGC 3324

The image reveals previously hidden areas of star birth, thanks to Webb’s enhanced infrared vision, able to peer crisply through clouds of dust. To give an idea of the scale of this image, the tallest of the mountain ‘peaks’ seen here is about seven light years high.

Webb is the next great space science observatory following the Hubble Space Telescope, launched to its working orbit, 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, on Christmas Day 2021. It came about as an international project led by NASA with its partners ESA and the Canadian Space Agency. ESA’s main contribution has been Webb’s NIRSpec spectrograph and 50% of the mid-infrared MIRI instrument, two of the space telescope’s four instruments.

Europe also undertook the launch of Webb, by Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. This proved to be a major success for Ariane 5 – contributed to by companies from 20 European countries. The extreme precision of its orbital injection has doubled Webb’s projected working life from 10 to 20 years, because it conserved satellite propellant that would otherwise have been consumed by trajectory corrections.