By Mary O’KEEFE

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” ~ Galileo Galilei

On Tuesday the first photos/data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) were revealed to the general public and to many of those who worked on the project.

One of those photos revealed Stephan’s Quintet.

“Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies, is best known for being prominently featured in the holiday classic film, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ Today, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals Stephan’s Quintet in a new light. This enormous mosaic is Webb’s largest image to date, covering about one-fifth of the Moon’s diameter. It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. The information from Webb provides new insights into how galactic interactions may have driven galaxy evolution in the early universe,” according to NASA.

And this is just the first five days of science that has come from the JWST.

Very early on Tuesday morning the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) hosted a viewing of the first photos.

“We are going to see some incredible images,” said JPL director Dr. Laurie Leshin. “[We are] part of the global event. We are doing this together.”

There were viewing parties throughout the world including those involved in the JWST mission and those who were just interested in this history-making new step in scientific discovery.

“This is a global mission. Science doesn’t know national boundaries, discovery doesn’t care where you live,” she said.

Before the viewing began, Michael Ressler, U.S. project scientist for MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), a JPL project, spoke to the audience.

Ressler had started with JWST in 1997 when NASA put out a call for concept studies for instruments for the next generation telescope. He worked with others at JPL to create a concept and submitted a proposal on Sept. 10, 2001.

There was a lot of time put into the JWST and the mission had its challenges.

“[One of the challenges] was the heat exchanger assembly and the compressor flight versions were never joined together on the ground,” he said. “The first time we ran them as an integrated cooler was a million miles from Earth … It is working beautifully. No issues. We are cold and we are operating … The cool down was a long process; physics takes a while.”

Leshin and Ressler each thanked not only those who worked on JWST but also their families, who dealt with the workers being consumed by this mission.

“I want to say a special congratulations and express my gratitude to everyone who worked on the mission,” Leshin said. “And the cryo-cooler, which was so easy to build right [she joked) – no problem. This instrument is operating at less than seven degrees above absolute zero. That just blows my mind.”

The Cryo-cooler specialist for MIRI at JPL is Konstantin Penanen. He was at the viewing of the first photos with his son, Tanmay, a ninth grader, and his wife Shilpa Jain.

“I am very proud,” Tanmay said of his father. “He was very excited about [the mission].”

Working on the mission, or on any mission at JPL, is not a nine-to-five type of job – and families know that – but the payoff for all the hard work, in this case, will give scientists a look at the stars and galaxies that formed the universe.

“I was amazed,” Tanmay said.

“I am so happy,” Konstantin said. “I am happy Mike [Ressler] is happy.”

“The engineering challenge was [because it is] an exquisitely sensitive infrared astronomical observatory, [so] the James Webb Space Telescope’s optics and scientific instruments need to be cold to suppress infrared background ‘noise.’ Moreover, the detectors inside each scientific instrument that convert infrared light signals into electrical signals for processing into images need to be cold to work just right. Typically, the longer the wavelength of infrared light, the colder the detector needs to be to do this conversion while also limiting the generation of random ‘noise’ electrons,” according to NASA.

“It’s going to stay cold for 25 years or longer,” Konstantin said.

For more information on the JWST, go to https://science.jpl.nasa.gov/projects/jwst/.