A team of scientists has leveraged the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to produce a massive mosaic of space made up of 690 photos. The result is the largest galaxy survey image to date.
of space made up of 690 photos. The image covers an area of the sky about eight times as large as the telescope’s first deep field image released on July 12.
The huge mosiac was generated as part of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey , an initiative whose goal is to demonstrate, test, and validate extragalactic surveys with the help of the JWST. CEERS has just completed its first set of observations, called , which includes a huge amount of data captured via the JWST’s Near Infrared Camera and MIRI imaging systems.“Epoch 1 covers less than half of our total survey area on the sky and already the images have led to new discoveries and an unexpected, but not unwelcome, abundance of never-before-seen galaxies,” CEERS explains.
The massive image, which can be downloaded in full resolution from the CEERS website, consists of 690 individual frames captured with the JWST’s NIRCam. The result is the largest galaxy survey image to date. The file is a massive 268MB TIFF file and is 31,200 by 10,000 pixels. Seriously, I beg you to download the high-res image on your computer and ZOOM IN! Here is just 1/4 of 1 of 4 total images included in our mosaic and you can already see how much SPACE is here! *Warning* the high-res image is BIG – I recommend not trying to open it on your phone